“I always used to joke I would open my own gallery”

The Corner Store Gallery has been one of East Orange’s go-to attractions for locals and visiting art lovers from outside of the region for the last seven years.

Nearly cracking a decade since the Gallery’s establishment, it has gone onto being a successful regional platform for exhibiting emerging and established artists from near and far across Australia.

Behind this booming operation is the talented artist and gallery director Madeline Young, one of the most relaxed, funny, and lovely people you could meet in town.

I had the opportunity to visit Madi down in her Gallery, to talk about all things art and about her artistic journey in bringing Orange’s most beloved independent gallery to life.

“There’s certainly a movement towards regional awareness for artists and galleries alike, people don’t think we’re dumb country hicks anymore,” she says with a cheeky giggle and grin. “Which is great.”

When asked about her profession within the arts, Madi responded gleefully with, “It’s surreal, I’m lucky, not many people can say they enjoy their jobs. I know I sure do, it’s fun.

There’s constant inspiration being surrounded by art all day. I get very excited about opening new artworks every week and seeing what new pieces people have sent me. I love it.”

Madi has always practiced art in some form or other, Madi originally thought she would have pursued graphic design or landscape design.

“I don’t know why I had chosen the art profession, I got into it at university in Newcastle and thinking at the time it was never a practical choice. But my parents were always supportive and encouraging to give it a go.”

During our conversations, gallery visitors were periodically popping in and out, looking over the exhibit of local and non-local pieces that were on display. Madi greets and farewells her visitors as they come and go.

Admittingly, even my own curiosity was being drawn to her current exhibition, in which Madi and I would talk about various artworks and the artists before returning to the subject at hand.  

“After finishing university, I’d realised I will have to get a real job eventually because how do you make money as an artist. It is a big question for everyone in this profession.

I was offered the job of the artist in residence at Kinross Wolaroi School. I moved back to Orange from Newcastle and spent four years doing that and absolutely loved it,” Madi said joyfully.

Despite loving her time as an artist in residence, Madi’s yearning to dive back into the art scene was strong. Quickly, she began developing and making art professionally, however, there was an obvious hurdle to overcome – there wasn’t an avenue to exhibit works from emerging artists within the region.

Of course, there’s our prestigious Orange Regional Gallery, although, they don’t take on emerging artists Madi conveyed. Seeing an obvious void for emerging artists struggling to have their art exhibited somewhere eligible, where they could have the necessary exposure to help launch one’s career further and have a hub for buying customers to review and purchase their creations.

The initial ideas for The Corner Store Gallery began to take hold from Madi’s and many other emerging artists’ career dilemmas.

“I always used to joke I would open my own gallery. Never intending to go through with it, which is ironic because here we are now,” Madi says with a laugh.

Living a couple of doors down from where her future gallery would be situated, Madi found the perfect building for a gallery, which at the time was a hair salon and before that a corner store during the 1990s where she would buy lollies and sweets on her way home from school.

“I thought if I could live out the back of it where there’s a little one-bedroom apartment and could turn the hair salon space into a gallery. That way it would be financially viable because we would be living there. Plus, I could have an art studio to continue my own artistic ventures. That’s how I opened the gallery.”

Running the Gallery has become Madi’s main priority and helping elevate her exhibited artists to reach regional audiences. “I love watching their careers grow with success and that’s always very satisfying. I get really excited to see an artist’s career go from nothing, relatively unknown, to being publicly established. It makes it even more special when they’re local too.”

In-between maintaining the Gallery’s operational duties, Madi continues to paint on and off, continuing to develop her body of work. She has her latest art pieces exhibited currently in Weswal Gallery and Sydney Road Gallery. “I wasn’t painting for about two years, but now I am doing it pretty constantly while running the gallery. It’s pretty bloody nice,” Madeline joyfully says.

“I just finished a series of colourful abstract landscapes which were very popular and before that I did some very geometric botanic abstract pieces. Just colourful and I’m all about colour, composition, texture, and material.

I am a colourist, can’t say I’m bad at colour. Some people like it and some don’t – they’re not for everyone. That’s how all art is, it’s all subjective preference.”

Madi directs my attention to what she’s been working on recently, “I am sort of doing a collaborative body of work with my son… he’s three,” Madeline honestly explained. “He makes a big mess, but I love it. His paintings are really awesome, so I’m going to try to get an exhibition together with him. I’m turning his scribbles and his drawings on my canvas into paintings – that’s where I am going next.”