WA Artwork Gallery exhibition wrestles with ghosts of colonialism in an age of woke
6 min readIt owns priceless items of artwork by the likes of Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale, Norman Lindsay, Tom Roberts and even Lucien Freud, in addition to one in every of Australia’s most recognisable masterpieces, Frederick McCubbin’s Down on His Luck.
Key factors:
- The Artwork Gallery of WA is phasing out everlasting collections
- It means historic masterpieces could also be off show a number of the time
- As a substitute, the gallery will attempt to point out items that provide contemporary views
However should you had been hoping to see any of those famend treasures on the Artwork Gallery of Western Australia for a lot of the previous two years, you’d have been upset.
Most of them have not been on show in any respect.
Up to now, AGWA has exhibited its historic jewels, encased in their elaborate gilt-edged frames, side-by-side in a devoted gallery, the place guests might marvel at works by Heidelberg College greats and English Romantics alike.
Now it is taking a radically totally different method, as director Colin Walker makes an attempt to draw new audiences whereas wrestling with the ghosts of colonialism in a brand new age.
Mr Walker, who took over at AGWA in the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, stated it was time for the gallery to answer international occasions and take into consideration the broader context of its artwork.
“It’s important to be political within the sense that you have to reply to problems with the day in some form or type … and you have to give extra space to folks and artists and communities and ethnicities who’ve simply not had the entry earlier than,” he stated.
Since Mr Walker took over, there was a renewed deal with the gallery’s intensive assortment of Indigenous works, together with Blaklight — a month-long celebration of First Nations artwork and tradition earlier this yr, wherein each wall and exhibition house was dedicated to First Nations artwork.
The gallery director needs to create a “festival-like” environment within the gallery, wherein everlasting collections are a factor of the previous and the emphasis is on contemporary views to draw new audiences.
Meaning the historic masterpieces could also be off show for lots of the time.
“We can have durations when there shall be no historic works [on display]. And likewise, we can have durations when there will be only a few up to date works in the twentieth century or no matter,” he stated.
“We wish to do important issues. We will not be parochial, we have to join ourselves to the remainder of the world.”
Historic collections curator on the gallery Melissa Harpley stated she felt a eager duty to have a look at the gallery’s function in society within the up to date context of Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and local weather change.
“There is a worldwide motion in artwork museums, the place we’re our collections and what’s not represented or what’s not displayed,” she stated.
“With the pandemic and all of the latest political actions … I personally could not maintain doing the identical factor with the gathering, I felt that we wanted to work in a extra type of energetic method.”
Her method is exemplified within the gallery’s newest exhibition, dis/possessed: id and sense of place, the place a few of its best-known work are on show in a really new context.
McCubbin’s iconic Down on His Luck has had a literal and figurative makeover — not solely has the glass that used to cowl it been eliminated, enabling a a lot clearer view of the 1889 portray, however it’s set amongst a roomful of works by West Australian Indigenous artists whose depictions of pastoral life are far faraway from his.
Foremost amongst these is Mervyn Avenue’s Bull Experience, a sequence of three vivid work of an Indigenous bull rider at a Fitzroy Crossing rodeo.
Additionally on show are the gallery’s Hans Heysen assortment, together with the large Droving Into The Mild, which is ready subsequent to the hanging ochres and browns of Warmun group artist Charlene Carrington’s Texas Nation.
Ms Harpley stated she wished to get audiences fascinated about the attitudes of the previous in a special context, as a substitute of viewing the work in a chronological method that presupposed the concept of Western progress.
“It is fascinated about how we’re partaking with the surroundings, how previously, we have type of handled it by way of land clearing and operating sheep and cattle throughout it, versus what we would do now,” she stated of the dis/possession exhibition.
“What additionally occurred within the early twentieth century was that artists within the Kimberley began to really feel capable of speak about after which depict the type of actually horrible encounters that had occurred between pastoralists and Indigenous folks.
“So it was actually essential to incorporate that and that type of storytelling concerning the historical past of that individual panorama … making a number of the elements of what is not seen within the Heysons for instance.”
Mr Walker, too, is eager on disrupting the outdated order and attracting youthful audiences to the gallery who had not beforehand been although its doorways.
In latest months, 65 DJs have performed on the gallery’s sensible new rooftop bar, and an artist discuss by Instagram favorite Sarah Bahbah attracted a whopping 650 folks.
Nevertheless, not everybody’s proud of the gallery’s extra up to date new path.
“The Woke brigade has gone berserk!”, a latest evaluation of the gallery on TripAdvisor learn, whereas different reviewers complained of “an entire lot of up to date garbage!!”
Ms Harpley stated she understood some folks’s disquiet at not being capable of see their favorite works on everlasting show.
“However it [the historical collection] must be related and desires to talk to audiences in 2022,” she stated.
“It isn’t 1992 or no matter, we have got to … work with it in a type of irreverent and up to date method.
“The world may be very, very totally different place. And I feel we have to keep attentive to that and never be mired down in an outdated model of pretending every part’s rosy as a result of perhaps it is not.”
It is an method that appears to be working, if viewers numbers are any information.
Extra folks walked via the gallery’s doorways in July and August than some other consecutive months since 2008, Mr Walker stated.
“I can let you know now that if I wasn’t bringing cash in and people audiences weren’t going nicely, I might been nicely crucified by now,” he stated.
