Preparations for the six-week festival of the visual arts are already well underway, with planning for six ‘Art Villages’ to be spread across the city.

Mr Walsh, who was responsible for bringing White Night to Australia and establishing it as a contemporary driver of artistic endeavour, hopes the conversations around art engendered by the success of White Night in Ballarat will continue with the BOAA.

“What the White Night concept has done … around the world is create new audiences. We’re engaging people who have an interest in the arts, but they feel they don’t have a connection or they are intimidated by the arts.”

Mr Walsh says the large volume of entries bodes well for the vision of the biennale in doing the same thing: introducing the people of Ballarat to a new and wide variety of contemporary art.

Curator Julie Collins will be responsible for working through the 600 applicants and settling upon approximately 150 final artists to be featured in the 50 indoor and outdoor venues featuring work across Ballarat.

Eighteen of those artists will receive the opportunity to display their work in solo exhibitions. 

The unique thing about BOAA is that it is both a Ballarat contemporary art project as well as a national contemporary art project, says Mr Walsh. 

“It’s creating the opportunity for Ballarat to become the largest prospective, rather than retrospective, of contemporary art in Australia.”

Among the events planned for BOAA are the solo exhibitions, night projections and lighting projects, lakeside sculptures, performance art and the Best of Ballarat, where local artists will have their work contextualised with some of Australia’s leading artists.

There will also be Art in Odd Spaces, outdoor installations, an art camp where people will be able to see works in progress,as well as educative and inclusionary projects.

“We’ll get access to those hidden spaces that people haven’t been able to get to in the past. It’s a showcase of art but it’s also a showcase of Ballarat.”