July/August 08
An Ever Expanding Universe (WA) > WA
Because of its title, my initial reaction to this exhibition was one of curiosity. Read More
Art Deco 1910 - 1939 (VIC) > VIC
With its Bakelite radio, Tamara De Lempicka painting and luxurious dressing table complete with intricate ivory inlays, the opening room of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Art Deco show says it all. Read More
Melbourne Art Fair (VIC) > VIC
With 80 commercial galleries, 10 project spaces, two specially commissioned installations and anticipated sales at the $10.5 million mark, the Melbourne Art Fair isn’t the sort of place to play things down. Read More
Puberty Blues
To stay sane in this world it is sometimes necessary to step back and laugh at the sheer nonsense that follows in the wake of a moral scandal. Read More
Robert Jenyns (NSW) > NSW
Pop psychologists and armchair analysts are masters of the succinct and the obvious. Read More
The enchanted forest: new gothic storytellers (VIC) > VIC
Curiouser and curiouser... a new approach to gothic. Read More
Turn, Turn, Turn: the past talks to the present (NSW) > NSW
Nick Waterlow is the only person to have curated more than one Biennale of Sydney. Read More
VIVID National Photographic Festival (ACT) > ACT
Australian photography festivals are seemingly multiplying at a rapid pace, with VIVID being the latest member to join the growing team. Read More
Get into Art!
By Megan Backhouse
In Paris, the Louvre has taken to staying open latetwice weekly to lure more visitors, while one Athens gallery boosts attendances by offering half-price entry to those with children in tow. Moving closer to home, Queensland galleries annually band together for a week-long come-and-visit-us campaign.
In short, art galleries and museums around the world are actively working to increase the numbers of people filing through their doors and Victoria is no exception. Come Sunday 28 October, the Public Galleries Association of Victoria (PGAV) is running its second Get into Art! day, which means special programs and free entry.
Rehgan de Mather, Random Rhyme > Gippsland Art Gallery
From Benalla to Gippsland to Flinders Lane, galleries and museums will be putting on talks and tours and encouraging visitors to try their hand at an assortment of art projects - think skateboard-painting (Central Goldfields Art Gallery), clay-building (the Duldig Studio) and mask-making (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery).
PGAV program manager, Helen Kaptein, says last year's Get into Art! prompted a 95 per cent increase in attendances than on the previous Sunday. Moreover, she maintains, about 36 per cent of each gallery's visitors had never been to that gallery before.
"We really view that as a catalyst for boosting attendances," Kaptein says. "We are wanting people to make a connection with a gallery that is lasting and goes through the year."
In a bid to attract new audiences, the 36 galleries participating this time around (18 metropolitan and 18 regional) are identifying and targeting those sectors of their communities they don't see often enough.
Young people is one such group, hence the skateboard project in Maryborough's Central Goldfields Gallery and a stencil art one at the Gippsland Art Gallery. Anton Vardy, the director of the Gippsland Gallery, and PGAV president, says it is important to capture the interest of teenagers and then to encourage them to keep visiting.
He says being in a rural area without a university it is hard to attract people aged in their 20s: "When people hit about 18 they tend to go to the city and we don't see them again until they're in their mid-30s and they come back with families."
He has found one of the best ways to increase visitor numbers, however, is to axe entry fees permanently. Since abolishing the $3 entry charge on July 1 last year, the annual attendance has swollen to almost 23,000, up from 15,000.
It is in this vein that the PGAV are insisting all galleries participating in this year's program drop their fees for the day. Whereas last year Heide Museum of Modern Art was allowed to participate in the day and charge for entry, this year the Bulleen outfit is not part of the event.
The National Gallery of Victoria is dropping its entry charge for its Gordon Bennett exhibition for 28 October. While Bennett - with his explicit, noholds- barred examination of place and nationhood - won't appeal to everyone, the NGV head of education and programs, Gina Panebianco, says the gallery is also organising activities for families, children and carers for the day.
Warrandyte's mudbrick-home-dwelling Aboriginal art collectors are also something of a target this time around. Damian Smith, the curator of Ringwood's Maroondah Art Gallery is getting leading Aboriginal art expert Wally Caruana in for the day.
The one-time National Gallery of Australia curator and now senior consultant for Sotheby's will be on hand to do Antiques Roadshow sort of appraisals of works from people's collections.
"With the open day, I think you have to tap into an interest or need within the local community and I just have a hunch that this will bring people out of the wood work," Smith says. "We are quite close to Warrandyte and I grew up around that area and I have seen lots of people who bought Aboriginal paintings in the '70s and have got them in their mudbrick houses."
Moving to the grand 1850s State Library of Victoria, Get into Art! will involve a super sleuth project with viewers dispatched on a mission to answer questionsabout certain items in various exhibition spaces. While the Monash Gallery of Art in Wheelers Hill is adopting an Australian rules theme for the day, with one project involving the making of a football banner.
So, as Kaptein says, there should be something to lure just about everyone.
Gordon Bennett, Born Australia 1955, Number thirteen 2006, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 152.0 x 304.0 cm. Collection of Luca and Anita Belgiorno-Nettis, Sydney. Photography: John O'Brien Copyright Courtesy of the artist. > National Gallery of Victor
