Art highlights Sapphire Coast Oyster Trail at Merimbula Visitor Information Centre

Getting the artwork onto the MVIC's curved feature walls was no easy task, taking original artwork and merging it with graphics to produce huge printed vinyl sheets that had to be carefully applied.

Behind the work was interior designer and graphic artist Christiane Partl of Pambula who was contacted by Anthony Osborne of The Destination Agency which was working with Sapphire Coast Wilderness Oysters on the project.

"It was a good opportunity to look at the whole space. The wall was a great opportunity to create an artwork and a map and tie them in together to create a strong point of interest," Christiane said.

"I did a huge acrylic painting and traced over aerial shots of the coastline."

Christiane incorporated six maps for the trail and created a pattern of artwork for the top half of the installation to highlight national parks.

Christiane explained that while she could visualise how it would look, she needed to be able to share that vision with the other people involved.

"I modelled the whole space in 3D and used that computer model to show how it would look. It was a pretty important tool," Christiane explained.

"It is quite a bold statement and being able to walk through the space in 3D meant everyone was on board with it from day one."

Working with Wilson Signs Christiane needed to give them a single digital file that they could use for printing.

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"It was created as a single file with layers. I traced the coastline in Illustrator (graphics software) and then exported the whole file from In Design (design and publishing software)."

The entire file contained elements of Christiane's original art, graphics based on maps and pop out information in both graphics and text.

"The single file was 12Gigs in size and took ages to send over to Wilson Signs."

The entire space is 9.6m wide by 3.9m high and the design was printed on self-adhesive vertical strips, each one 1.2m high by 1m wide.

"From the initial meeting to installation took about two to three months which also included a few meetings with Sapphire Coast Wilderness Oysters and the MVIC. It was a really fun project."

Merimbula Tourism manager Chris Nicholls said the feature was an opportunity to get an overview of the entire coastline.

"Sapphire Coast Wilderness Oysters are made up of six different areas representing 65 oyster farmers in our area from Bermagui to Wonboyn," he said.

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