REGIONAL ART GALLERIES
A culture trip around the country
WHEN IT OPENS IN MAY, the $60.5 million HOTA Gallery will be Australia’s largest public gallery outside a capital city, spanning six levels and more than 2000 square metres of exhibition space. It will be home to the $32 million City Collection, composed of more than 4400 artworks including those by Australian art royalty like Ben Quilty and Tracey Moffatt and one of the largest collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in regional Australia. Among its inaugural exhibitions will be an exclusive world premiere of contemporary masterpieces from New York featuring iconic works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jeff Koons.
And if the fact that HOTA Gallery is opening in Queensland’s sun-soaked Gold Coast surprises you, maybe it shouldn’t. “I won’t tolerate anyone ever saying the Gold Coast is a cultural desert because it is simply not true and it has simply never been true,” says Criena Gehrke, CEO of HOTA, Home of the Arts, an ambitious cultural precinct ensconced in tropical parklands just a stone’s throw from Surfers Paradise. HOTA is already home to two theatres and arthouse cinemas, an outdoor stage, swimming lake, Sunday farmers’ market and more. The gallery – a bold architect-designed building with a colourful but sympathetic aesthetic inspired by a painting, The Rainforest by William Robinson, held in the gallery’s collection – will be the jewel in the crown.
Of course, the DNA of the city is built on entrepreneurship, business and tourism, says Gehrke.
It is unapologetically Australia’s preferred holiday destination and playground. But she also speaks of the rich stream of creativity that has bubbled away here for decades – not least in the precinct HOTA has evolved from, latterly The Arts Centre Gold Coast, which was founded in 1986 with its strong performing and visual arts cultures (including the world-class City Collection that has been built up in that time). Then there’s the thriving food scene and distinct personalities of the city’s various villages, from Burleigh Heads to Coolangatta to Southport. All of this creative ambition will now find its expression in the HOTA Gallery – the opening of which will prove a transformational moment for the city and how it is perceived as well as a catalyst for its continued cultural evolution.
We can find similar stories all across Australia as knockout art galleries in cities and towns outside the state capitals are becoming increasingly dynamic destinations in and of themselves. And despite the enormous challenges posed by the pandemic, momentum is only building in the regional arts space with a suite of major renovations and openings planned for 2021 and beyond. Also in Queensland and set for completion late this year is the $31.5 million reimagining of Rockhampton Art Gallery within a vibrant new cultural precinct. Meanwhile, in NSW, state-of-the-art Ngunungulla, the first regional art gallery in the Southern Highlands, is taking shape on a historic dairy site and set to open in August; nearby in Shoalhaven a light-filled contemporary gallery is being embedded in the landscape at Bundanon Trust and slated for completion in October. In Victoria, the Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) will reopen later this year in a bold new building (see page 66) and galleries the country over are getting sleek multimillion dollar makeovers: from Grafton Regional Gallery, in
NSW’s famous jacaranda town, to Orange Regional Gallery in the state’s Central West. Plans are afoot, too, for major expansions at Newcastle Art Gallery – Australia’s first purpose-built regional gallery.
And you could chart a course around the country through exciting exhibitions this year. There’s the Archibald Prize 2020 on its regional tour taking in everywhere from Murwillumbah to Griffith to Penrith. Bendigo Art Gallery – one of the country’s best regional galleries, which has carved a niche for itself with blockbuster fashion and design exhibitions – has scored another Australian exclusive with Mary
Quant: Fashion Revolutionary (20 March – 11 July), a retrospective on the iconic British fashion designer from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). And then there’s leading Australian contemporary artist Ben Quilty’s exhibition,The Entangled Landscape, at Cairns Regional Gallery and internationally renowned street artist RONE in Geelong (see page 66). Heading to Tamworth (22 May – 25 July) is a costume exhibition from Canberra’s National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) featuring the vintage fashions worn by Kate Winslet, Sarah Snook et al in the 2015 movie The Dressmaker.
Alternatively, you could explore Australia’s regional galleries based on the specialisms that many of them have. Head to SAM, Grafton, Murwillumbah and Tamworth, as mentioned above, for ceramics, drawing, portraiture and textiles respectively; or the NSW Riverina cities of Wagga Wagga, Albury and Griffith for their National Art Glass Collection, National Photography Prize and National Contemporary Jewellery Collection.
But beyond one big-hitting exhibition or specific focus, regional galleries inhabit an interesting and nuanced space. As well as being plugged into both the international and national psyche, the onus is on them to also be hyperlocal and play an important role within the community as a platform both for local artists and for promoting the region to the wider world. “I’ve always felt we should be a gallery about Gippsland, not just a gallery in Gippsland, and we should be proud of our artistic achievements, which are closely linked to the story of who we are as a people,” says Simon Gregg, director of Gippsland Art Gallery in the Victorian port town of Sale on the doorstep of the Gippsland Lakes. The gallery’s hosting of the Archibald Prize 2021 regional tour later this year (8 October – 21 November), its only stop in the state, will be the biggest exhibition in the region’s history and, while it might be the reason for people coming to Gippsland, Gregg says, “We hope it will be the launching point into a journey of discovery through the rest of the region.”
“The Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery is the only major publicly owned gallery for hundreds of kilometres in every direction,” says its gallery and museum manager Tara Callaghan. “Our unique position means we have a great responsibility to the Far West of NSW. Regional galleries are socially inclusive spaces that not only offer a great range of artworks to view, but experiences, programs, workshops, events and much more.”
Broken Hill, Gippsland and all regional galleries put their First Nations communities at the heart of what they do. “We are part of the oldest living civilisation in the world; this makes it imperative to support and learn about culture and country,” says Dr Joanne Baitz, director of Bunbury Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) in Western Australia’s South West. Housed in an iconic pink convent building dating back to 1897, fundamental to its work is its everyday engagement with Noongar curators, artists and arts professionals to educate and to promote Indigenous art in order to fully represent all voices in the region. “We live on this land, we need to know its stories, to understand how to live and work together for the benefit of all,” Baitz says. “Art is empowering and educational and a means of
addressing difficult issues. It is a great way of unearthing hidden histories.”
And ultimately, a knockout regional gallery is one that is entirely of its place and provides visitors with a touchstone and entry point for exploring the region they’re in. A visitor to BRAG, says Baitz, “Would be introduced to a strong regional voice fully engaged with social, political and economic global issues, but grounded by the rhythms of the natural world, in both subject matter and material.” For travellers in Gippsland, says Gregg, “the gallery should be first on the ‘to-do’ list as nothing can capture the unique qualities of a region – of its people, its history, and its natural environment – the way artists can.”
HOTA Gallery will kick off with an exhibition called Solid Gold: Artists from
Paradise, featuring major new commissions across sculpture, painting, photography and more by emerging and established Australian artists with a connection to the region. Gehrke hopes a visit to the gallery will be at once world-class in its quality of art, and entirely reflective in its experience of the laid-back and accessible lifestyle and the environment of the Gold Coast. As democratic as the beaches themselves. The image in her head is this: you and the kids head to the cultural precinct for a swim in the lake before racing across the parkland, ice-cream in hand, to the gallery. “And then all we ask is that you dust off your sandy feet because it’s not too good for the art!”
Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, NSW
Founded in 1904, the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery (BHRAG) is the oldest regional gallery in NSW. And just as compelling as the artwork it displays is the building it’s housed in: “Operating from 1885 to 1985, Sully’s Emporium was the longest surviving commercial business in Broken Hill providing much of the heavy machinery and equipment for the development and exploration of Broken Hill’s mineral fields,” says gallery and museum manager Tara Callaghan. Today the gallery has a permanent collection worth close to $10 million including works by modern masters like Margaret Preston and Arthur Streeton, contemporary artists such as Elisabeth Cummings and Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, and a fantastic collection of works by leading Indigenous artists including Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. Its annual program includes exhibitions by local artists, touring shows like the Archibald – the 2020 Prize is on show here from 9 July to 22 August – and two prestigious prizes: the Pro Hart Outback Art Prize and the Maari Ma Indigenous Art Awards (MMIAA). While you’re in town: Have a soda spider and a trip back in time at 1950s-era Bells Milk Bar and Museum then head just out of town to the Living Desert & Sculptures with its 12 giant sandstone sculptures set dramatically against the outback horizon.
Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre, Murwillumbah, NSW
Murwillumbah, located in a green caldera in North Coast NSW’s creative Tweed area, is home to one of the country’s best regional galleries. The architecturally award-winning Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre is set scenically on a hillside outside of town overlooking Wollumbin (Mt Warning). “We’ve got a beautiful building – the setting is extraordinary, the landscape really is amazing,” says director Susi Muddiman OAM on one of the many reasons this spot is such a hot destination. Added to that, the diversity of programming across several distinct spaces, including the Margaret Olley Art Centre in tribute to the celebrated painter who attended primary school in Murwillumbah, which includes areas that have been recreated from her famous Paddington (Sydney) home studio. Tweed was the first gallery this year to kick off the regional tour of the Archibald Prize 2020 (until 7 March); from 19 March to 22 August it will host Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series and from 14 May to 31 October A life
in art will bring together artwork from each decade of Olley’s extraordinary career.
While you’re in town: Simply stroll the streets of this country town to discover its buzzing markets and new wave of hip cafes and stores.