Communion Brewing Co has blended creativity, community and craft beer through a unique new initiative that gave Tasmanian artists the chance to see their work on shelves – and in fridges – across the state. A t Communion Brewing Co, community has always been more than a buzzword. It is built into the business name, the venue atmosphere, and the approach owners Andrew and Leah Turner have taken since opening in Burnie. Now, the brewery has found another way to strengthen those local ties through its inaugural Canvas Series art competition, a project which invited Tasmanian artists to design the label for Communion’s next Pale Ale release. For Andrew, the concept was born from a simple idea: giving artists a different kind of canvas. “We’ve seen something like thid competition done elsewhere and thought it was a pretty cool idea,” he said. “We were just keen to give the local artists a way of expressing themselves in a cool and different way.”
artists, with a strong focus on encouraging entries from the North West Coast. That local-first mindset was important to Communion from the beginning. “It was mainly pretty local, more so the North West Coast, but it was open to anyone in Tasmania,” Andrew said. “We wanted to keep it local, for Tasmanian artists to have a crack at this rather than opening it up Australia-wide. That was important to us.” The response delivered exactly what the team had hoped for, a wide range of creative interpretations and styles that reflected both the individuality of the artists and the personality of Tasmania’s creative community. Andrew admitted he originally expected the submissions to lean toward abstract artwork, but the final entries surprised him. And rather than selecting the winner themselves, Andrew and Leah handed the decision-making process to the wider Communion team, with staff members voting on their favourite design. “In my head it was probably something fairly abstract,” he said. “In the end, it was not that. “Every artwork got at least one vote, and in the end it was really close between two very different pieces.”
The competition was open exclusively to Tasmanian
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Tasmanian Hospitality Review February/March Edition
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