New director takes over at The Lock-Up creative space

As the new director of The Lock-Up creative space in Newcastle's East End, he will likely be engaging in history-making himself.

In the coming weeks, he will finish his job as lecturer in the School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle and focus full-time on growing The Lock-Up's audience and considerable reputation for creative programming.

He's a two-cups-of-coffee a day kind of guy who makes espressos (long black) at home. He enjoys painting, "abstract works with big brush marks".

The first artist to make a lasting impression on him was Edvard Munch. The artist he'd most like to own a work from is Shaun Gladwell, who he was worked closely with in the past, both at the Australian War Memorial, where he was a curator of contemporary art, and at The Lock-up, where he curated Gladwell's show control.

Heywood comes to The Lock-Up after spending 2022 as collections curator for Maitland City Library and the teaching post at the University of Newcastle.

The main reason he sought the position at The Lock-Up, where he succeeds Jessi England and Courtney Novak, who directed the creative space consecutively from 2014, was to get back to the front line of the artworld.

"To work with contemporary artists was a big drive," he says. "I enjoy doing it. I did it at the [Australian] War Memorial. I worked with Ben Quilty, Shaun Gladwell, Alex Seton. And with Lyndell Brown, Charles Green, and then also an overseas commission with Koken Ergun.

"I saw an opportunity to dive in and work with ideas in a different way. Develop projects and publications, drawing on other researchers and writers that are dealing with topics, and screw down and investigate things.

"My background is as a researcher as well as curatorial. I found an opportunity to bring them together."

Heywood and program coordinator Wednesday Sutherland will be finalising grant program applications in the next two months. Previous director Courtney Novak and former program coordinator Holly Farrell have moved to positions at Maitland Regional Art Gallery.

Besides The Lock-Up's exhibitions, a key element of its platform is the artist-in-residence program. Heywood realises the importance of the residency program, which draws interest internationally, and often results in work produced that is later shown at The Lock-Up.

How he describes The Lock-Up: "It is a place that is highly evocative which stems from its history as a building, as a lock-up since 1861. But it's a contemporary art space, so the contemporary art brings its own highly poetic experiences. I think those mesh really well. And it's a space for the community."