GASP cut highlights great divide
Sadly ironic if Glenorchy Art & Sculpture Park vanished while DEC next door is spruced up with taxpayer funds, writes Greg Barns
YOU may have driven past it many times but not stopped and walked it. Set on the waterfront in front of the Derwent Entertainment Centre is the Glenorchy Art & Sculpture Park.
With its colourful elevated boardwalk across the water and the extraordinary pavilion designed by local architectural firm Room 11, at Wilkinson’s Point the GASP, as it is known, is a brilliant example of using the foreshore of a waterway for something more than just recreation or a carpark.
Sadly however, while the Glenorchy City Council has been busy funnelling energy and resources into a redeveloped basketball stadium at the DEC has decided GASP doesn’t matter. Funding has been withdrawn and the future of GASP, if its balance sheet is anything to go by, must be said to be clouded.
In 2014 Architecture Australia wrote about GASP, “GASP was conceived and realised by a dedicated team working in consultation with an engaged and appreciative community.”
Since 2008 when the idea of GASP was born it has hosted some extraordinary art and design work. Perhaps as importantly, it is a community arts space. And this is what makes it such an important asset for Hobart.
Art and sculpture parks on reclaimed waterfront spaces are not common. The Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle is a stellar example of the importance of such places. It is, like GASP, open to the community and it turns heads as one traverses this part of the downtown. Similarly, the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. What they, and GASP, have in common is that art and design draw one to the waterfront. Instead of the areas being closed off, or simply being an overgrown and unkempt public reserve, these parks provide an opportunity for people to walk, reflect, gaze and generally slow down in a space that speaks of curiosity and wonder.
Having established GASP and seen it evolve over the years to be a unique and special place on an otherwise relatively unused waterfront in Hobart, it would be tragic to see it go.
While Glenorchy council will continue maintenance and upkeep of the area, on May 25 Mayor Kristie Johnston announced that the $104,000 the council has given the GASP in recent years would be the last payment. Using COVID as a cover, Mayor Johnston said that “we simply cannot justify continuing to give more than $100,000 per year of our ratepayers’ money to an independent and private arts company for curatorial purposes.”
While GASP might be a private company it is a microminnow. It has run at a small loss of about $18-$20,000 from 2017 to 2019. It is doubtful that without council support this organisation will do much more than muddle along. Only one councillor dissented from the cavalier treatment of GASP, with the others following their mayor.
Even more disturbing is the fact that GASP met with the Mayor and others only two weeks before the announcement of the axing of funding. GASP chair David Palmer says he and his team wanted to develop what he called Stage 3 located at Montrose Bay. “GASP Stages 1 and 2 gave the community the iconic boardwalks and pavilions. Stage 3 would have given them even more value, and an independent income to help make GASP viable. The magnitude of loss of this economic stimulus potential to enable a burgeoning of creative social enterprise, jobs, career development and income for local artists, arts workers and young people, is hard to calculate and very sad.” Why would the council cut funding with this knowledge?
So what is to be done? Is the community simply going to let GASP fold in circumstances where, for at least 12 months, the philanthropic and business sponsorship market is dire? It beggars belief that would happen. Particularly given that the Premier Peter Gutwein announced the equally cash strapped state government will hand over a staggering $68 million for a basketball team, the refurbishment of the DEC, and some community facilities next door.
It would be sadly ironic if the GASP was to vanish while the DEC, which looms over it, is spruced up with taxpayer funds.
Perhaps the council will rethink its position. It seems utterly irresponsible and shortsighted to cut off support, other than maintenance, for what is a wonderful space which brings the aesthetic and spiritual genius of art and design to the community.
There are, as noted, not many opportunities around the world to use prime waterfront land in such an innovative and sharing way.
What a pity it would be if the DEC and surrounding spaces glistened in the sunlight courtesy of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, but something of inestimable cultural, community and aesthetic value right next door was no more.