James Mollison, the founding director of the Australian National Gallery, saw the need for a gallery of contemporary art, located outside the main building.
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This was called the Drill Hall Gallery (ANG) and was the venue for a string of ground-breaking exhibitions of contemporary art. Between 1984 and 1992 the shows included landmark exhibitions of contemporary Australian photography, printmaking and decorative arts, as well as memorable exhibitions such as New Romance, A first look and the Philip Morris Collection. The next director, Betty Churcher, decided to close down this space and it reverted to the Australian National University. Her main arguments at the time were essentially twofold. Firstly, ideologically she felt that to have a separate space for the display of contemporary art sent a message that the gallery, which she in 1992 renamed as the National Gallery of Australia, did not have complete confidence in this art and was a little in bestowing on it its authority. She argued that it all needed to be shown in the single main building, all under the same roof, with the complete endorsement of the gallery. Secondly, financially it was very expensive to maintain operations at two separate venues, paying for minders, security and curatorial staff, all at a time when Betty Churcher was under pressure to cut costs and to balance the books.
The process has come a complete circle with the National Gallery of Australia launching a new venue for the display of contemporary art at the former Gallery of Australian Design space (which in turn has now moved to 47 Jardine Street, Kingston). NGA Contemporary, as this new space will be known, is only a short walk from the main gallery building on the southern foreshore of Lake Burley Griffin and was opened by Ron Radford in one of his final acts as the outgoing director. The inaugural exhibition is of 21st century Australian art and is envisaged as one of four exhibitions to be held annually examining various aspects of contemporary art practice. Politically it is meant to showcase some of the treasures of contemporary Australian art which are otherwise rarely seen in the main building, where only about 2 per cent of the gallery's collection of Australian art is on display at any one moment. This figure is slightly misleading as the collection includes about 65,000 Australian prints and photographs which would rarely be exhibited in any case and this tends to somewhat distort the statistics. Perhaps the more pertinent political argument is that it underlines the claim made by the National Gallery to attract funds for stage two of the Gallery's building redevelopment project, which includes The Centre for Australian Art, which would see a multiplicity of new galleries dedicated to Australian art.
The show itself includes a number of items included in the Australia exhibition at the Royal Academy in London last year as well as a number of bulky items, including Ron Mueck's Pregnant woman (2002), which I personally would be happy never to have seen again. There is also the recent Patricia Piccinini, The stags (2009), a superb Bill Henson photograph, Untitled 2011/12, a beautiful and quite disturbing Peter Booth and a well known Fiona Hall series. An unexpected surprise is an outstanding Gareth Sansom, Bill and Ted's excellent adventure (2010) and one of eX de Medici's watercolour weapons from 2002. There is a single painting by Dale Frank and a small Sally Gabori, an artist whose is best seen through her huge sprawling canvases. An exhibition of this nature suffers from similar criticism as the London show itself in the 21st century section. By including so many artists, all represented by a single work, it becomes a bit too much like an assortment of chocolates, with little feel for any one artist's work.
In defence of it, one could say that this is the first show at this venue, where an attempt has been made to be inclusive and that subsequent exhibitions will adapt a more focused approach. Both the new gallery and the show will prove to be controversial, but one can only applaud new spaces dedicated to the display of contemporary art and stirring the possum in Australian art can never be a bad thing.