The story behind the scene and the people who created it

A new exhibition titled Loneliness Unpacked opened Tuesday at the Central Coast Cultural Centre on Mann Street in Gosford with 12 installations made from everyday objects collected along the Central Coast shoreline.

The project started in March when six artists from the Avoca Beach Collective began meeting weekly at the Avoca Beach Community Hall to turn discarded fishing gear and phone screens into room-sized displays. Their work responds to rising reports of social isolation on the coast after the Telstra outage last month cut triple-zero calls for four hours across the region.

From beach debris to gallery walls

Lead maker Elena Torres gathered 400 plastic buoys from Terrigal Beach between April and June. Fellow artist Raj Patel welded them into a walk-through tunnel that plays recorded voicemails from residents who lost contact during the outage. The piece sits beside a single goldfish bowl installation that mirrors the Melbourne show mentioned in national coverage but uses Central Coast data on 28 percent of households living alone according to the 2021 census update released this year.

Funding came from a $45,000 grant by the Central Coast Council arts program plus ticket sales at $22 per adult. The centre expects 2,400 visitors before the show closes on 28 August.

Next steps for visitors

Guided tours run daily at 11am and 3pm from the Mann Street entrance. Advance bookings are required through the centre website because capacity is limited to 45 people per hour. Residents can also drop off their own unused devices at the Gosford Library collection point until 20 July for possible inclusion in later rotations.