ART SUNDAY - NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA

“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.” - John F. Kennedy

We are visiting Canberra for the weekend to see “Floriade”, the great Spring exhibition of flowers. We also took the opportunity to visit some favourite old haunts, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Canberra Museum and Gallery and the foreshore of Lake Burley Griffin.

The National Gallery of Australia (NGA; originally the Australian National Gallery) is the national art museum of Australia as well as the largest art museum in the country, holding more than 166,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art museum.

Tom Roberts, a famous Australian artist, had lobbied various Australian prime ministers, starting with the first, Edmund Barton, to create a National Gallery. Prime Minister Andrew Fisher accepted the idea in 1910, and the following year Parliament established a bipartisan committee of six political leaders—the Historic Memorials Committee. The Committee decided that the government should collect portraits of Australian governors-general, parliamentary leaders and the principal “fathers” of federation to be painted by Australian artists. This led to the establishment of what became known as the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board (CAAB), which was responsible for art acquisitions until 1973.

From 1912, the building of a permanent building to house the collection in Canberra was the major priority of the CAAB. However, this period included two World Wars and a Depression and governments always considered they had more pressing priorities, including building the initial infrastructure of Canberra and Old Parliament House in the 1920s and the rapid expansion of Canberra and the building of government offices, Lake Burley Griffin and the National Library of Australia in the 1950s and early 1960s. Finally in 1965 the CAAB was able to persuade Prime Minister Robert Menzies to take the steps necessary to establish the gallery. On 1 November 1967, Prime Minister Harold Holt formally announced that the Government would construct the building.

In 1968, Colin Madigan of Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Partners won the competition for the design, even though no design could be finalised, as the final site was now in doubt. In 1971, the Government selected a 17 hectare site on the eastern side of the proposed National Place, between King Edward Terrace and for the Gallery. Even though it was now unlikely that the lakeside Parliament House would proceed, a raised National Place (to hide parking stations) surrounded by national institutions and government offices was still planned. Madigan's brief included the Gallery, a building for the High Court of Australia and the precinct around them, linking to the raised National Place at the centre of the Land Axis of the Parliamentary Triangle, which then led to the National Library on the western side.

The construction of the building commenced in 1973, with the unveiling of a plaque by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1982, during the premiership of Whitlam’s successor, Malcolm Fraser. The building cost $82 million. The National Gallery building is in the late 20th-century Brutalist style. It is characterised by angular masses and raw concrete surfaces and is surrounded by a series of sculpture gardens planted with Australian native plants and trees. The geometry of the building is based on a triangle, most obviously manifested for visitors in the coffered ceiling grids and tiles of the principal floor. This geometry flows throughout the building, and is reflected in the triangular stair towers, columns and building elements.

The building is principally constructed of reinforced bush hammered concrete, which was also originally the interior wall surface. More recently, the interior walls have been covered with painted wood, to allow for increased flexibility in the display of artworks. The building has 23,000 m2 of floor space. The Gallery has been extended twice, the first of which was the building of new temporary exhibition galleries on the eastern side of the building in 1997, to house large-scale temporary exhibitions, which was designed by Andrew Andersons of PTW Architects. This extension includes a sculptural garden, designed by Fiona Hall. The 2006 enhancement project and new entrance was complemented by a large Australian Garden designed by Adrian McGregor of McGregor Coxall Landscape Architecture and Urban Design.

Just like the city it is found in, the Gallery is not an inviting place. Canberra is an artificial city and it is not built on the human scale. It is designed to be monumental, but it is a monument without memories, a rather cold and sterile place, a city that still struggles to find an identity. To be a pedestrian in Canberra is to be damned - this City was not designed for pedestrians. To get from place to place of interest one needs to drive (through empty space for a lot of the time) and negotiate roundabouts of gigantic proportions.

There are some significant art works in the Gallery, but there is also a lot of dross masquerading as modern art. There is a marked lack of European art prior to the 19th century so if one were to rely solely on this Gallery’s exhibits for one’s art education, it would be a very shallow education indeed. The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne is an infinitely richer gallery and one that has a collection that is better balanced (even though it may have less works in total than the NGA). Despite its shortcomings, a visit to Canberra would be inadequate without a visit to NGA…

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” - Plato
 

Well, Australian politics has once again proven that it is a volatile, yet not unpredictable, arena of power games. On the 24th of June 2010, Kevin Rudd elected Prime Minister of the Labor Party is ousted form leadership by his deputy Julia Gillard who assumed the top job, becoming Australia’s first female Prime Minister. For nearly two years, Rudd and Gillard have been playing power games, garnering support in a Government that is hanging on the edge of a precarious, small majority. Various political scandals, leaks, squabbles and leadership speculation have made the Labor Party seem like a spent force in the political stakes and the alternative on the side of the Liberals is not an option that many Labor supporters would consider as an alternative on election day, especially given the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott never a popular choice as Prime Minister.
 

On the 27th of February 2012, Julia Gillard won a leadership poll quite comfortably, with Rudd getting 29 votes to her 73 votes of support in the Labor Caucus. On the 30th of January Gillard announced a September 12th election this year. This marked the beginning of the end of hopes of a Labor party re-election with litmus test polls making it quite clear that she could never lead the Labor party to a win in this poll.
 

On June 26th Kevin Rudd was re-elected as Prime Minister by the Labor Caucus defeating Julia Gillard 57 to 45 votes. Rudd has taken back the PM position, three years to the week after he was pushed out. It is easy to imagine that Kevin Rudd may think that this has all been about righting a wrong, seizing back what was his “by right”. He did say in the press conference immediately after the ballot results were announced: “In 2007 the Australian people elected me to be their PM. That is the task that I resume today …” The leadership squabble has been costly to the party and contributed to, although is not responsible for, Gillard’s failures. This has not surprisingly, led to Gillard’s announcement about her retirement from politics.
 

These events of the past three years have highlighted that the Australian Labor Party nationally has experienced its most rancorous divisions since the split of the 1950s. The present situation, contrary to the split of the 1950s, involves the party in government, as opposed to the 1950s when the party was in opposition. More damning now, is the reason behind the divisiveness, which in the 1950s was due to ideological and philosophical differences within the party ranks while now, egos seem to be involved. This may reflect the deterioration of politics worldwide into polls based on personality and popularity rather than fundamental differences in political policy, ideology and key strategic directions.
 

The progressive, slightly left-leaning Labor party in Australian politics has in the last two decades moved towards the right, becoming more capitalistic, more conservative and more influenced by globalisation policies that favour big company interests. The conservative, rightist Liberal party is not much different from the Labor Party in ideology and policy, but perhaps they may be more honest in the rhetoric that admits the direction they advocate. Many people later this year will have a real problem when they go to vote. We may see quite a shift towards the minor parties, the worse case scenario being one of the small parties holding the balance of power, which may make governing the country difficult. We shall see what we shall see…

WORKING LUNCH IN CANBERRA

“If a man love the labour of any trade apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

I was in Canberra today for work. I’ve had two very productive and successful meetings, but it’s been very much a “fly-in; meet; fly-out” type of day! Canberra must be one of the most ‘interesting’ national capitals in the world, being very small, very utilitarian and completely artificial. As a consequence, not many Australians choose to live there if they can help it, including many of the politicians who come in do their bit of governing and then fly back to their preferred place of residence. It is very much a city of public servants, and its atmosphere as well as its everyday life is rather pedestrian. Definitely not cosmopolitan (despite the foreign presence of the embassies) and definitely not buzzing with life and excitement (despite its ‘capital’ status)!

Canberra has been the capital of Australia since parliament moved there in 1927. It is a city of about 350,000 people and is geographically 150 km from the ocean and 281km SW from Sydney. Canberra is thought to be an Australian Aboriginal name meaning “meeting place” from the Aboriginal word Kamberra. The site of Canberra was chosen as Australia’s capital city in 1908. In 1912, an international architectural design competition was held to design Canberra’s urban living space. Chicago architect, Sir Walter Burley Griffin won the competition.

His vision was to build a city that blended into the bushland and which was designed around several monumental ‘circuits’ with magnificent avenues and vistas allowing for uninterrupted views for kilometres on end. It is a very ‘natural’ city with quite a lot of vegetation, but most international visitors we have take there are rather disappointed, as the bushland is typically Australian and in summer especially, it can look very drab and khaki-coloured. Europeans and Americans are used to the deep green verdant shades of their forests and countryside – not so in Canberra! However, in Spring the city’s parks are transformed into blooming bulb flower gardens and the “Floriade” festival ensures that there are many visitors to enjoy these displays.

In 1963, the Molonglo River was dammed to create a vast artificial lake in the centre of Canberra, aptly named Lake Burley Griffin, in tribute to Canberra’s architect. This lake transformed the landscape and provided a focal point around key structures of the city. It is also a venue for recreational activities such as sailing and looks good in this inland (sometimes very hot!) city. The watersprout is a Canberra landmark as is the Carillon, which is situated on the lakefront and was donated to the people of Australia by Great Britain and dedicated in 1970.

One of the most important and iconic landmarks of the Capital is the Australian War Memorial (http://www.awm.gov.au/). It is a majestic building that looks like a cathedral, a temple, a museum, a mausoleum and a massive cenotaph all rolled into one (see picture above). Visiting this is quite an emotional experience as thousands of dead Australian soldiers are honoured within its shrine. Australia has fought bravely in many wars in distant countries and the toll has been a heavy one for such a fledgling nation. The War Memorial reserves a special place in every Australian’s heart.

The National Parliament (both old and new buildings) is also in Canberra and the new Parliament House is a highly controversial building. It was designed by Mitchell/Giurgola Architects and opened on 9 May 1988 by Elizabeth II, ‘Queen of Australia’. When it was constructed, it was the most expensive building in the Southern Hemisphere and cost over AU$1.1 billion to build. It has 4,700 rooms with many areas are open to the public. The House of Representatives chamber is decorated in green while the Senate chamber is decorated in red. Separating the two chambers is the Members’ Hall, which has a water feature and is not open to the public. The Ministerial Wing houses the office of the Prime Minister and other Ministers. It is definitely worth a visit.

One of my meetings today was a working lunch, which took place in the Verve Café and Bar in Manuka (read “Maá-naa-ka”), an inner suburb of Canberra. I had a chicken Caesar Salad, while my companion had the pumpkin risotto. The latter was apparently very good but the Caesar was definitely not up to Melbourne standards! The lettuce, dressing, ‘bacon’ (=strips of ham!) and croutons left much to be desired, while at least the chicken and the… egg were very nice. I did not mind overly much as the meeting went very well, as did my morning and afternoon meetings!

Nevertheless, it’s so good to be home for the weekend!