David Rosetzky, Nothing like this (film still), 2007. Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery

By Hannah Mathews

Little known fact: most of ACCA’s staff grew up in the country! It’s not entirely clear what that says about us but it does show that the regions are growing individuals with an active interest in the contemporary arts and the ability and wherewithal to work closely with artists to support their creative and critical visions. That’s no mean feat and is certainly good news for the health of culture in a country this vast.

Since 2006 ACCA has been working with regional Victorian galleries to bring major contemporary art works, previously only seen at ACCA, to all corners of the state. Through its partnership with the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust, ACCA commissioned several ambitious and exciting new projects from artists, including Callum Morton, Rosslyn Piggott, Daniel von Sturmer, David Chesworth and Sonia Leber, which were exhibited in galleries as far-flung as Bendigo and Mildura and later gifted to these institutions.

Brendan Lee, Proving Ground, 2009. Courtesy the artist

In follow up to this program ACCA then initiated its ART (ACCA Regional Touring) program. Taking place over 2010-2011, with project funding from Arts Victoria, this program saw ACCA partner with a number of regional galleries throughout the state to develop site-specific and community-responsive exhibitions and art works. ACCA wanted to shake up the conventional practice of touring pre-packaged shows by working in conversation with a selection of galleries to devise exhibitions and programs designed specifically for each host’s space, collection interests, audience demographics and desire to grow their expertise and knowledge in presenting contemporary art.

ART#1 was the first cab of the rank and drew together three host venues in close geographical proximity to each other. ART#1 consisted of a series of purpose-created exhibitions and took place simultaneously at the Benalla Regional Gallery, Shepparton Regional Gallery and Wangaratta Art Gallery. Local audiences, tourists and supporters from Melbourne could follow a trail of art openings and events over the Easter weekend, visiting one venue after another to experience a range of contemporary work including video, photography, installation and sculpture. In Shepparton a number of artists made site-specific works that interrogated the gallery spaces while in Benalla, Brendan Lee created a major installation that commented on Australian identity and hooligan culture. In Wangaratta audiences were welcomed into a historical community hall to watch a program of new video works screened on stage.

In 2011 ACCA set its sights on Victoria’s Western District, establishing partnerships with galleries in Horsham, Hamilton and Warrnambool. This time a program was devised for each regional host and scheduled to occur throughout the year. ART#2 opened in Horsham with support from the Natimuk Brass Band who played at the exhibition opening and participated in one of several community projects initiated by the ART#2 artists. Artist Nathan Gray recalls: “I especially enjoyed getting to know the Natimuk Brass Ensemble who I worked with to create a performance titled Rural Infrasonics. For the performance I joined the band for a brief time, processing the sound of the ensemble and expanding them into an otherworldly digital cacophony. What surprised me most was how unsurprised they were. They took the whole thing in their stride as did the audiences we played to at the local footy game, farmers market and at the shops on a Saturday morning”.

Artist Gabrielle de Vietri also spent considerable time in the area, undertaking a residency in Horsham that saw her work with children to explore the pedagogical potential of games. Screened at the Natimuk Town Hall, her video was part of the opening weekend celebrations that also included Agatha Gothe-Snape’s balloon climb of the nearby Arapiles and Laresa Kosloff & Andy Thomson’s audio guide to lawn bowls at the local bowling green. Gothe-Snape’s work continued to permeate the community over the coming weeks with weekly headlines, generated in conversation with Horsham identities, appearing in the local newspaper.

As a counterpoint to the frenzied and site-specific activity of ART#2 in Horsham, the program in Hamilton offered a collection-focused and gallery orientated platform for exchange. Here artists Kate Daw and Alex Pittendrigh both spent time with the gallery’s decorative arts collection while also researching local history and landscapes. Pittendrigh undertook an open residency at the gallery where audiences could watch his innovative and knowledgeable approach to the fine art of filigree using the no-nonsense medium of Blu-take. Pittendrigh also led local students in a number of workshops, resulting in a large-scale, highly detailed relief that filled the gallery walls.

ACCA’s ART program stood alone in its activity of embedding contemporary art in regional Victoria. The series not only brought contemporary art and artists from the city to the country, it also brought contemporary art and artists from the regions into conversation with their metropolitan peers. Mentorships were developed between ACCA staff and some of the regional hosts, opportunity for new art writing was extended to young writers, audiences for contemporary art were grown just a little further.
ART#1 ACCA REGIONAL TOUR: Shepparton, Benalla and Wangaratta
17 April – 30 May 2010
Exhibiting artists: Jen Berean, Nick Devlin, Pat Foster, Shaun Gladwell, Nathan Gray, Justine Khamara, Anastasia Klose, Laresa Kosloff, Brendan Lee, David Rosetzky, Daniel von Sturmer, Darren Sylvester

ART#2 ACCA REGIONAL TOUR: Horsham
7 May – 3 July 2011
New commissions: Gabrielle de Vietri, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Nathan Gray, Helen Johnson, Laresa Kosloff & Andy Thomson
Exhibition artists: Stuart Ringholt, Nicholas Mangan, Bianca Hester, Joshua Petherick, Fiona Abicare, Benjamin Armstrong, Matthew Griffin, Damiano Bertoli, TV Moore, Laresa Kosloff, Justene Williams
ART#2 ACCA REGIONAL TOUR: Hamilton
23 July – 18 September 2011
Artists: Kate Daw, Alex Pittendrigh
Hannah Mathews is a contemporary art curator who started working with ACCA as an Associate Curator in 2008.

Tacita Dean, Kodak, 2006. Courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris

By Juliana Engberg

Tacita Dean’s large survey exhibition at ACCA in 2008, including film portraits, landscape works, Berlin projects and films regarding phenomenon and film alchemy, offered Australian audiences an opportunity to update their knowledge of Tacita’s prodigious output – an interest ignited by the first survey I made with her for the Melbourne Festival in 2001. 

In this first survey exhibition, we concentrated on mostly film works – Bubble House, Teighmouth Electron, Disappearance at Sea, Fernsehturm, Bag of Air, Sound Mirrors, the epic Banewl, and others.  For the second, more substantial survey edition at ACCA in 2008, we presented a mix of media – prints, altered photographs, found items and film works.  The 2008 survey enabled audiences to witness the expansion of Tacita’s visual language, as well as appreciate the consolidation of many of her favorite themes, including time and history, which she investigated in a number of ways and through a range of subjects.

Tacita Dean, Michael Hamburger, 2007. Courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris

The exhibition included three film ‘portraits’.  Michael Hamburger, a 23 minute film of the poet and translator of Sebald’s novels was a study of belonging, time, friendship and mortality presented through the metaphor of the apples grown by Hamburger, and through a sequence of very still filmic images of place – his orchard, apple barn, study – and phenomena – light, darkness and a rainbow.   Tacita’s film work seemed to make a deliberate effort to slow time for her subject, whose mortality was reaching an end. Tender and private, Michael Hamburger, demonstrated Tacita’s continual interest in the intersections of history that are performed in the interpersonal.

Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films), 2007 was a spatial choreography of 6 films on screens in which the audience’s movement was activated in contraposition to the seated stillness performed by the renowned choreographer Merce Cunningham, who only altered his position 3 times in the slightest of ways.  This collaboration between Tacita and Cunningham was both a homage to Cunninghams’ life companion, composer John Cage, and a new interpretation of his avant-garde sound classic 4’33”.  STILLNESS was a double portrait of Cunningham/Cage and an investigation of time, space and content, multiplied and continuous in Tacita’s loops, acknowledging a companionship everlasting.

Tacita Dean, installation view ACCA, 2009. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Presentation Sisters – a study of an order of Nuns in Cork, Ireland, captured the daily routines and rituals of the last remaining members of this small ecclesiastical community. With a patient and gentle regard for the rhythm of the hours of the day, plotted through the ethereal light that travels through the lives and rooms of this order, Dean emphasized the aspects of quiet devotion, internal contemplation and external dedication that defined the Sisters' spiritual and earthly existence.   Once more time was explored – developed through small rituals – washing, meal preparing, ironing, cleaning – silence was palpable, and light transcendent, alchemical and transformational.  The arc of the day was measured by light from the brightness of the early morning to the ebb of the twilight.

These aesthetic considerations were extended in Kodak, a more abstracted vision of celluloid film passing through its processing mechanisms – filmed just before the closure of the Kodak plant in Chalon-sur-Saône, France.  In this work Tacita’s keen eye for translucent colour made the mechanical magical as the film stock spooled and traveled, refracting and reflecting as it went through its last motions.

As well as these film works and several more, the survey included works on paper, altered photographs and prints.   Massive photographic works of dolmens (prehistorical stones), in which Tacita erased the background with blackboard paint to release the stones so that they became a floating gestalt, continued the investigation into time, in this instance through the geological phenomenon of material compression.  These works were joined by a series of her trees, similarly made iconic and dimensional through the process of background erasures.

More recently, in 2013, ACCA presented Tacita’s FILM – her major commissioned work first seen in the Tate’s Turbine Hall series.   At a time when film as a medium is threatened, FILM, was conceived as an epic homage to the analogue processes of celluloid cinema.  Unexpectedly turning the presentation of film into a vertical reel format, this awesomely scaled work reinvented and rescued the techniques of hand-made special effects and montage to reveal the artistry in film-making. Tacita brought our attention to the beautiful, auratic qualities and historical uses of light through film and highlighted the special effects made possible by hand tinting, manual editing, and scene-making, to produce a grand, yet detailed distillation of film and its aesthetic qualities.  

In 2014 ACCA, with filmmaker, Emma Sullivan as coordinator, joined with Tacita to launch the website SAVEFILM.ORG in the hope of securing support to preserve film and its unique aesthetic language.  Please click here to sign the Save Film petition and learn more about the effort to keep film viable. 

Tacita Dean
6 June – 2 August 2009    

Catalogue

Juliana Engberg is Artistic Director of ACCA.

Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger: The Water Hole, installation view, ACCA, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

By Kay Campbell

The Water Hole was one of those exhibitions that just took off and became an overnight hit. ACCA was inundated with families and kids over the summer holiday season, captivated by the magical world created by Swiss collaborative duo Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger. The exhibition was the closest ACCA had come to a ‘blockbuster’, with more people than our small staff could cope with at times.

ACCA welcomed Gerda and Jörg to Melbourne for a 3-month residency to prepare their environmental installation The Water Hole in September 2008. Our project partners, Footscray Community Arts Centre, provided them with accommodation and studio space, and over many weeks they worked with members of the local community and other volunteers to create hundreds of imaginary creatures, strange ceramic eggs, fabulous trees and other paraphernalia which would eventually make their way to ACCA.

The Water Hole featured a huge new commission in ACCA’s main gallery that took the visitor through a fabulous grotto. There were many other earlier works also presented in the smaller galleries, including videos, mobiles, a hanging bed, a suspended meteor and a tear desalination experiment.

Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger: The Water Hole, installation view, ACCA, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

At the heart of Gerda and Jörg’s practice lies a serious concern for the environment.  Using discarded things – broken toilets, obsolete mobile phones and plastics brought together with a forest of trees, self made crystals, invented creatures made from thrown away items – they created a fantasy world. The Water Hole was a three dimensional, experiential place in which the organic and inorganic performed a symbiosis of invention and exuberance.

Children and adults alike were drawn to The Water Hole, as if discovering a fantastic fictional place. People lay on the therapeutic bed whilst a meteor swung over their heads, or on a swinging bed under a magical chandelier of twigs and bits and pieces.  They wandered around exploring a kaleidoscope of caves, water and crystals; peered into microscopes to see the tiny world held in a tear drop; climbed to a look-out to observe other visitors exploring the grotto; and moved along the silver, shimmering tunnel that sounded like rain. All the while a tiny drip of water was released into the golden pond-bed, which over the season, dried and cracked in sympathy with one of Victoria’s most prolonged droughts.

During those hot summer holidays, the ACCA education team created a treasure hunt to encourage kids to notice the details and share the experience with their parents and grandparents. In February we were overwhelmed with school groups.  Until that time ACCA’s education program had focused predominantly on secondary and tertiary students, but the overwhelming response of young children inspired us to devise ACCA’s renowned philosophy of art for kids sessions known as MAKE. I still find it exciting watching young participants in this popular program curiously grappling in quite sophisticated ways with some of the bigger questions that art throws at us.

Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger: The Water Hole
23 December 2008 – 1 March 2009

Kay Campbell is the Executive Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Richard Billingham: People, Places, Animals, installation view, ACCA, 2007. Courtesy ACCA Archive

By Lauren Dornau

In 2002 ACCA moved to the new Wood Marsh-designed building on Sturt Street, Southbank.  In comparison to ACCAs old home in Dallas Brooks Drive, which had low ceilings and small modestly proportioned rooms, the new ACCA’s design, with its expansive spaces, high ceilings and multiple rooms delivered a version of the European kunsthalle or ‘exhibition hall’ which was ideal for exhibiting contemporary art.

Coinciding with ACCA’s change of space and status, video art emerged as a force in contemporary visual arts.  ACCA’s new accommodations were poised to receive moving image work as it asserted its prominence as a media. The new ACCA was ideal for moving image and video works; large expanses of wall uninterrupted by window or door openings or decorative trimmings created a blank canvas for projected media.

Since its origins in the early 1960s, from works using small television sets to large digital projections, experimental to documentary, single channel to interactive installations video art has come a long way. ACCA has been the lead gallery in Melbourne to embrace and nurture video art as a contemporary art medium.

Over the past 12 years ACCA’s main exhibition gallery has been used for both solo and group shows and its proportions have proved perfect for large video works such as Shirin Neshat’s dual screen ‘Turbulent’ (2004), and Callum Morton, Marco Fusinato and Mutlu Cerkez’s collaborative work Avalon for the group exhibition ‘The Unquiet World’ (2006).  The stark, enclosed architecture of the interior spaces has suited shows like Richard Billingham’s ‘People, Places and Animals’ which dealt with issues of hostility, discomfort and captivity.  The combination of smaller and larger gallery spaces has worked well for major surveys of artist’s works where often a new commission is supported by several older key video works, for example; Pipilotti Rist’s ‘I Packed the Postcard In My Suitcase’, as well as group exhibitions such as ‘Cinema Paradiso’ (2007) and ‘Gestures and Procedures’ (2010) which showcased multiple film and photographic works.

In addition to this a larger gallery space has provided an opportunity for the projected work to be positioned in different locations; adjacent or on walls so the audience can sit, relax and soak in the work or as a sculptural object of it’s own that can be experienced physically and/or physiologically.  In David Rosetzky’s ‘How to Feel’ bean bags were set up in front of the screen and invited the viewer to become part of the studio-based therapy/exercise workshop featured in the work. Tacita Dean’s ‘Film’ was projected onto a monolith or ‘mountain’ of a wall mimicking the mountains depicted in the film. Douglas Gordon’s island of TV monitors as part of ‘The only way out is the only way in’ (2014) resembled a floating island of electronic refuse. In ‘Gestures and Procedures’ many of the artists’ works were installed in separate rooms that invited the audience to participate in their personal experiences and interpretations

Lauren Dornau completed a Bachelor of Architecture from RMIT University and currently interns at ACCA.

Gillian Wearing, Self-portrait, 2000. Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, and Maureen Paley, London

By Kay Campbell

I was particularly excited when Juliana started talking to Gillian Wearing about doing a show at ACCA.  I’d been captivated from my first encounter of her work while I was living in the UK – its tough and tender portrayal of the precariousness of the human condition was compelling and unique. Quite different in spirit from that of most of the so-called YBAs with whom Gillian was associated and also unlike any practice in Australia at that time.  

At Saatchi’s notorious Sensation exhibition in London in 1997 I was struck by Gillian’s 10-16 installed in a side room where it emitted a raw vulnerable humanity that differentiated it from the slick works in the main hall. In this series of videos the words of 7 troubled children aged between 10 and 16 are lip-synched by oddly matched adults in mundane settings. Each narrative is a painful snapshot of a moment in an individual life, but their juxtaposition and sequence make a fascinating, complex and disturbing study of the loss of innocence, the development from childhood to adulthood, and the tension between the internal voice and the external facade. These are enduring themes in Gillian’s work. 

The exhibition at ACCA took a couple of years to realize, and the result, opening in October 2005, lived up to all my expectations. This first for Australian audiences provided a rare opportunity to see the depth and range of Gillian’s work and was the largest show that she had presented. The exhibition filled the whole space and featured most of her photo and video works including 10-16, the already iconic Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say, the notorious Drunk, the Family Album series and many more.  

Gillian Wearing, 2 into 1, 1997. Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, and Maureen Paley, London

The first work encountered at the entrance to the exhibition was an arresting self-portrait of Gillian in an emerald green jumper. From a distance its stiff blocky-ness suggested a naive painting; close up it became apparent that it was a photograph of the real Gillian inside a prosthetic of herself, with only her eyes appearing through the mask. This simple gesture immediately questioned the authenticity of photography, and the nature of self – as public and private, as artist and object.

On entering the main gallery, the viewer encountered the entire family album spread out across the back wall – brother and sister, parents, grandparents, an uncle. The eyes of Gillian appeared through each mask, spookily binding the family together, while simultaneously detaching herself. The self-portrait as a young child was particularly arresting – the knowing eyes of the adult Gillian showing through the innocent, sad and serious little face of her 3 year old self.

Within the gallery a series of claustrophobic box like spaces were constructed to house the moving image works Confess all on Video, Trauma and 2 into 1, heightening their psychological intensity. My favourite, 2 into 1, was devastating.  Once again the concept is very simple – twin 11 year old boys are asked to talk about their mother and she about them. Each then lip-synchs the words of the other. This revealing portrait of motherhood and the emergence of adolescence was fascinating and became excruciating at times, particularly as it caught the mother concurrently registering the often cruel words of her beloved boys as she mimes.

Gillian Wearing, Self-Portrait at 17 Years Old, 2003, Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, and Maureen Paley, London

There were many other highlights, from the tender and harsh Theresa series, to the surprisingly optimistic I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing. As always Juliana’s installation took the visitor on a physical and mental journey, which compelled them to move from one work to the next and then loop back on themselves. The last work, on the other side of the wall to Gillian’s self-portrait, was a tiny poignant portrait of her frail grandmother Nancy Gregory slumped in a wheelchair. There was no mask here, instead her face was hidden by a sun-hat and she remained internalized as the life ebbed out of her, silent except for the occasional soft chirruping of birds.

Mike Nelson, Lonely Planet, installation view, ACCA, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

By Rebecca Coates

Mike Nelson’s vast and ambitious, immersive installation, Lonely Planet opened to the public on 21 December 2006. Nelson created a labyrinthine series of corridors and rooms, complete with sounds, still images, and olfactory assaults throughout ACCA’s gallery spaces. His proposal for the project incorporated radical ideas about how visitors should enter this complex space. Original thoughts included an un-realizable proposal to cut a small discreet entrance directly into the building’s exterior cortene-steel wall. Another was to bring visitors through the gallery’s cavity wall, stepping over and between an impossible maze of struts and other spatial obstacles – a little like ACCA’s own version of Alice through the Looking Glass.

Nelson’s final solution forced visitors to decide their own route, having to choose from two adjacent identical doors in order to gain entry to the spaces beyond. A small, found, black and white photograph attached to the wall offered a possible clue, timelessly capturing a group of golden youths, board-short and bikini clad, with surfboards on a beach in some unidentifiable tropical spot.

Nelson’s work often examines the idea of ‘otherness’, and allusions to something lost or past. These themes are explored via images, language and material. The Coral Reef (2000), presented in Matt’s Gallery, London (for which he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2001), was evocative in its absences as much as in its rooms and narratives. The traces of a fictional biker gang, the Amnesiacs, littered the space, while one room seemed to be the headquarters for a London mini-cab taxi company employing immigrants, possibly Turkish, and likely to be under the radar and off the books. These literary and other traces alluded to complex histories that included postcolonial references, Islam, and geographies beyond the West.

Mike Nelson, Lonely Planet, installation view, ACCA, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Lonely Planet at ACCA was equally evocative in its absences. Corrugated iron, weather-board, an old work bench and tools, a particular shade of institutional green paint: for some, these spaces were redolent of rural sheds and vernacular architecture. For others, the installation conjured up thoughts of government buildings of the ’50s and certain, not always pleasant, institutional rooms. An old station-wagon with wetsuit and lines of ants on the move, a discarded sleeping bag, empty beer cans – the implications were not always clear.

Lonely Planet’s allusions to youth, drug cultures, and Australia’s own cult of surf and sand also pointed to hard-line conservative Thatcherite England, where the best way to escape (Lonely Planet travel guide in hand) was via cheap travel and the lure of the exotic, the oblivion of hashish, or the sci-fi literature and psychedelia of an altogether otherworldly kind. These utopian exoticas were spaces that existed outside the laws and customs of democratic societies, governed by subcultures with their own specific rules.

Mike Nelson, Lonely Planet, installation view, ACCA, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Redundant technology has been a constant refrain in many of Nelson’s immersive installations. Technology and literature are a source of inspiration, and a means through which to present the work. Nelson spent a six-week period prior to installation travelling country Victorian roads, documenting and photographing vernacular architecture, subcultures, and aspects of an often forgotten historic and rural past. These images were shown as a series of slide-projections washing the gallery walls, visible through windows in certain built rooms. The clack-clack of the projectors added an acoustic element from a by-gone era of analogue instruction and holiday slide shows. The slides were reproduced in the exhibition catalogue, a sort of artist’s book cross-pollenated with one of those obscure technical brochures Nelson loves. Reproduced in a grid within their slide mounts, these images captured hot-rod cars – souped-up Toranas and Valiants featuring the wonders of the panel-beaters’ craft – alongside abandoned folk images of service stations, used car tyre mountains, or temporary bush shelters of a possibly sinister type.

The exhibition allowed Nelson to work in a new way. Instead of his usual meticulous on-site build, which often took from six weeks to several months, we had an opportunity to pre-build in the Malthouse Theatre’s nearby store (now the VCA Secondary College). This meant that all of the sourcing of second-hand material and much of the pre-build took place prior to install. A small crew worked on this pre-build and the installation, including Ned Needham as chief assistant, the ACCA install crew, and a number of RMIT sculpture students. This opportunity allowed students to work alongside Nelson, gaining first-hand experience of his working process and methods.

A lecture given by Nelson at RMIT was a packed, standing-room only event. And in the end, we were not unhappy with the fact that though Lonely Planet Publications (whose home-town is in fact Melbourne) didn’t go so far as to officially condone the use of their trademark name, their very silence may well have been a form of tacit approval for a project that celebrated some of the founding principles of those once hippy, alternative travel guides first written in the 1970s.

Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet
19 December – 25 February 2007

Rebecca Coates initiated the Mike Nelson exhibition and was its curator. She worked at ACCA as a curator from 2002-2007 and was appointed an Associate Curator in 2007.

Van Sowerwine: Sharper Than A Serpents Tooth, installation view, Republic Tower, 2005. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Republic Tower, +Plus Factors, Make it Modern, ACCA @ Mirka

By Gabrielle de Vietri

Having settled into its new home on Sturt Street, by the end of 2004 a certain wanderlust for the space outside the white cube set in. And so began ACCA’s ongoing and evolving series of off-site projects.

ACCA was commissioned to curate the Republic Tower’s three enormous billboards in the middle of Melbourne’s business district between 2004 and 2007. Mariele Neudecker’s memento mori realigned Holbein’s distorted skull below a cracked, dried landscape. Equally as foreboding, Van Sowerwine’s sinister, yet vulnerable dolls loomed above diminished pedestrians.

During the 2006 Commonwealth Games, as part of ACCA’s +Plus Factors exhibition, collaborative duo Temp-team’s corporate human pyramid crumbled as acrobatics and business were awkwardly forced to merge. Other +Plus Factors projects took ACCA’s program onto the streets with a 24hr two-way viewing marathon by Tony Schwensen, the gifting of Justene Williams’ collection of blurred, colour-saturated photographs, and an attempt to widen Melbourne’s narrowest laneway by Space Pork Adventures art collective. The Inverted Topology group stacked painted planes of various hues against ACCA’s rusty exterior and Shaun Gladwell’s skateboarding video occupied the new space of a decommissioned fountain on the City Square during a particularly dry season.

ACCA’s satellite program spilled not only onto Melbourne’s streets, but found its way into other non-gallery spaces; spaces where contemporary art can create unusual disturbances as well as fruitful resonances. Two such projects were Make it Modern, an exhibition across an entire floor of accounting firm, Deloitte’s Melbourne headquarters, and ACCA @ Mirka at Tolarno Hotel ‒ a series of exhibitions in the newest incarnation of the famous Tolarno Hotel in St Kilda.

Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Pot Shot, 2005. Exhibited at Make it Modern, Deloitte, 2005. Courtesy the artist and ACCA Archive

Make it Modern confronted and consoled its viewers in equal parts. Beginning with Stuart Ringholt’s traumatic and hysterical video of screaming in an elevator, office workers and visitors were quickly appeased by Louisa Bufardeci’s Human Capital Survey, taking the form of a multiple-choice lolly box at the reception desk. David Noonan’s rich and gentle fabric paintings and Darren Sylvester’s contemplative vistas accompanied the daily dealings of corporate Australia, while Susan Norrie’s video projection of a hot bubbling cesspit disrupted the cool, sleek disconnectedness of the QV building’s fourteenth floor. Callum Morton’s glitzy architectural syntheses merged modernist buildings with contemporary franchises, and Rafaat Ishak’s paintings on MDF, inserted into Deloitte’s windows, attempted to bring structures and lines from the urban outside into the building. Black sacks with legs performed diagrammatic choreographies across the screen in Laresa Kosloff’s Deep & Shallow while my own hourly self-help slogans chimed over the PA.

If workers and visitors to the offices were conflicted as they journeyed through the corridors and meeting rooms at Deloitte, then diners at the Tolarno Hotel were bemused, dazzled and intrigued by the series of solo exhibitions that occupied the gallery room of its continental bistro, now named after one of its most famous artist-occupants, Mirka Mora.

The building, which, since the 1960s had played a significant role in forming and nurturing Melbourne’s contemporary art scene, was variously treated as a site specific salon by artists Stuart Ringholt, Matt Hinkley, Liv Miller, Nathan Gray, Alex Pittendrigh, Laresa Kosloff, Judith van Heeren, David Harley, Kate Daw, Sanja Pahoki and Kit Wise. Matt Hinkley set the room buzzing with a striped black-and-white wallpaper, which hosted a row of delicate optical drawings. Nathan Gray’s colourful paper wall sculptures spread joyously across corners in a medley of tassels, marbling, tape and string. Laresa Kosloff’s video performers tilted and bent in front of a primary school mural, as Stuart Ringholt’s circle cut out portraits played tricks on their unsuspecting subjects. Judith Van Heeren’s monochrome paintings of fantastical amalgamations of nature brought a ghostly sophistication to the dining experience, while Alex Pittendrigh adorned the walls of his intricate blu-tac embellishments.

Gabrielle de Vietri is an artist who worked at ACCA from 2005-2008.

Barbara Kruger, Republic Tower, 2004. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Republic Tower:
Barbara Kruger: Blind Eye
21 September 2004

Van Sowerwine: Sharper Than A Serpents Tooth
8 October – 22 October 2005

Mariele Neudecker: Ambassador
14 September 2006 – 28 February 2007

Make it Modern at Deloitte
1-25 June 2005
Artists: Lisa Ann, Stephen Bram, Louise Bufardeci, Emily Floyd, Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Rafat Ishak, Laressa Kosloff, Andrew McQualter, David Noonan, Stuart Ringholt, Darren Sylvester, Gabrielle de Vietri

+Plus Factors
13 March – 7 May 2006
Artists: Tony Schwensen, Justene Williams, Victoria Lawson, Space Pork Adventures, Shaun Gladwell, Chris Bennie, David Chesworth and Sonia Leber, Temp-Team, Inverted Topology

ACCA@Mirka
Stuart Ringholt
21 February – 9 June 2007

Matt Hinkley
12 June – 19 August 2007

Shaun Gladwell, Kickflipper: Fragments Edit, 2000-03. From +Plus Factors Exhibition, ACCA 2006
Courtesy the artist and Sherman Galleries, Sydney

Viv Miller
22 August – 25 November 2007

Nathan Gray
11 December 2007 – 1 March 2008

Alex Pittendrigh
4 March – 31 May 2008

Laresa Kosloff
3 June – 16 August 2008

Judith van Heeren
19 August – 15 November 2008

David Harley
1 December 2008 – 28 February 2009

ACCA at Mirka: Judith Van Heeren 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Kate Daw
3 March – 20 June 2009

Sanja Pahoki
23 June – 27 November 2009

Kit Wise
4 December 2009 – 28 February 2010

Josh Petherick
14 April – 25 July 2010

James Deutsher
29 July – 5 November 20

ACCA at Large, Part 2

Martin Creed: The Lights Off, installation view, ACCA, 2005. Courtesy ACCA Archive

By Juliana Engberg

Martin Creed’s Lights Off Work No. 270, occupying ACCA’s 3 salon galleries, generated much debate, commentary and not a little consternation in the mainstream media.  What! No lights?!  Nothing to see!!  Well of course there was.  The situational and subtle lights, pooling from green exit signs, the tinsel, metallic light from the entrance point, the cracks of light from under doors, the red and yellow blinks emanating from fire detectors and movement sensors where all there.  The space was alive with lights and colour – and sounds and movement, but one had to be prepared to quieten the eye, mind and spirit to find the beauty in the gloom.

It’s so easy for the media to assume the worst of contemporary art.  It’s manna from heaven for the talk-backs and shock jocks. They fear they are being made fools of, that the artist is having a lend of them.  None of this was the case with Martin Creed’s Lights Off. The work’s monumental darkness had a purity and purpose that for many became a kind of transcendence, in keeping with a tendency within minimalist practice to evoke the ecclesiastical through simplicity.

‘How much did it cost?!’ barked one journalist. ‘Nothing’ I said.  ‘The lights are off, it is a most ecological project, low energy and low emissions’. ‘What does it mean?!’ …’everything and nothing, being and nothingness, negative theology’…whoa there!! It was all too much for the mainstream media brain.

Jon Faine had me on his morning ABC Radio program and started the interview glaring at me in silence – silence! a huge no no in radio-land – but as I told him, he got it!  He was evoking John Cage’s 4.33 minutes of silence – probably as a joke…but in fact he had hit upon one of the central premises of Martin’s filled up emptiness.  Well done Jon, I said!  Nevertheless you could feel the hostility.

Driving along a couple of weeks later, I was listening in to the ABC Conversation Hour, and still Martin’s project was top of the chatter list.  A listener from Ascot Vale called in…I braced myself…here we go, I thought…’Yes, Good Morning Jon’ the caller said…’I went to the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art to see the Martin Creed Lights Off with my daughter’…’yes yes’, Jon excitedly encouraged … ‘yes, and it was one of the most profound and beautiful experiences I have ever had…’  she went on to describe that her daughter had some emotional issues to deal with and that they found the contemplative solitude of the project wonderful and helpful.  Nice.

Martin does not seek to prescribe the reaction to his work.  He puts it out there to allow it to be in the world and have the world find its way with it.  But he adheres to certain rules.  Keep it honest, keep it simple, and work with humility and an economy of material.  Lights Off was an epic version of his space and light works and lives on as an important experience for those who allowed themselves to go the phenomenological journey.

In addition to Lights Off Martin performed with his band a set of songs at the The Toff in Town – memorably his ‘numbers’ song – and gave a fabulous public talk at Federation Hall at the VCA.  Lights Off was presented opposite Callum Morton’s major project Babylonia at ACCA, and both of these projects were part of my Melbourne Festival Program for 2005.  Charlotte Day worked as coordinating curator on both projects.

Martin Creed: The Lights Off, installation view, ACCA, 2005. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Martin Creed: The Lights Off
8 October – 4 December 2005

Juliana Engberg is Artistic Director of ACCA.

Art Club, The Age, 25 November, 2009. Courtesy ACCA Archive

In the Press

19 July, The Sunday Age, Venice Revisited
12 September, The Age, Yellow peril paved the way
30 September, ArtsHub, Arts development embraces ACCA
25 November, The Age, Art club

Muntean & Rosenblum, Untitled (Certain Impressions Are So Vague) 2003. Courtesy the artist

By Juliana Engberg

Robyn Archer’s third and final Melbourne International Arts Festival 2004 was organized under the theme of VOICE, completing her trilogy of ideas TEXT, BODY, VOICE.  As we had done for the previous two festivals, ACCA responded by providing a focus on this thematic emphasis.

Voice was an inspiring concentration to bring to visual arts.  As curator of the Visual Art Programs, I assembled a group of projects that brought attention to the uses of the human sounds and words created by visual artists.

I commissioned a sound installation from Australian composer David Chesworth and artist Sonia Leber, which eventuated in a howling, demonic, uncanny subterranean situation in the public toilets located on Gordon Reserve, Melbourne.  The Gordon Assumption, as it was titled, featured a recorded chorus of voices performing the Shepard’s Tones of infinitely rising and falling notes.  This eerie sound, and weird green glow, combined the sacred with the profane, producing a kind of inhabitation of spirits and poltergeists.  Very funny.

Shirin Neshat Turbulent, 1998. Courtesy the artist

At ACCA the festival program included a reprise of Jude Walton’s early performance Opera, No Hope No Reason with slide installations by Ian de Gruchy, music by Walton and Hartley Newman, and libretto written by Walton and artist John Barbour.  The ACCA program also included a suite of works by Austrian artists Muntean and Rosenblum – Being in and out of love too many times itself makes you harder to love – which concentrated on the ennui of youth in text and figurative paintings, and a video piece featuring a coral work by Alessandro Scarletti. 

American based, Iranian artist, Shirin Neshat’s iconic work Turbulent, featured the amazing vocalisations of Iranian throat singer Sussan Deyhim and Kurdish/Iranian singer Youssefi Azari in a duel of gender, culture and belief.  Projected on two massive suspended screens in ACCA’s largest gallery, Turbulent was mesmerizing and powerful.

Jude Walton: No Hope, No Reason, performance documentation, ACCA, 2004. Courtesy ACCA Archive

The festival program also included Janet Cardiff’s iconic sculptural sound work, the Forty Part Motet.  The large space of ACCA was the perfect setting for this work comprising 40 standing speakers and sound. Each speaker was a surrogate body for a single singer.  The audience could engage with each voice, from the chatter of the pre-rehearsal moments to the individually sung notes.  Together the voices built to a crescendo of celestial intensity, only to stop abruptly at the height of its power, leaving the audience stranded, seemingly mid air, bereft of the soothing descent.

Cardiff’s project became a kind of cult presentation with some members of the public visiting  every day, bringing sheet music, lying on the couch provided – a constant stream of people engaging with this memorable work.  There was much crying and equal feelings of ecstasy. 

Rebecca Coates was the project curator for Forty Part Motet and Muntean and Rosenblum, and Geraldine Barlow and Angela Brophy coordinated the Neshat, Chesworth and Leber and Walton projects.

Janet Cardiff: Forty-Part Motet, installation view, ACCA, 2004. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Shirin Neshat: Turbulent
8 October –12 October 2004

Jude Walton: No Hope, No Reason
8 October –12 October 2004

Janet Cardiff:  Forty-Part Motet
16 October –12 December 2004

Muntean/Rosenblum: Being in and out of love too many times itself makes you harder to love
16 October –12 December 2004

Juliana Engberg is the Artistic Director of ACCA.

You Dont Love Me Yet, invitation, 2009. Courtesy ACCA Archive

ACCA’s public programs for 2009 included the fully subscribed Berlin Files, the first thematic talk series undertaken by ACCA, and curated to coincide with Tacita Dean’s exhibition. Over its 6 week run the program included talks and discussions by a range of cultural observers, writers and performers.  The series included Robyn Archer performing the one night only special event Berlin Between The Wars: An evening with Robyn Archer and Michael Morley.

The Ardoch Youth Foundation Program partnered with ACCA to identify and support disadvantaged primary students in grades 5 and 6 who go to school in the Southern, Northern and Western regions. This partnership was an extension of the successful Go West Program that was initiated in 2006.

In August, to compliment to her first solo exhibition, Tiny Movements, in Australia, ACCA presented Swedish artist Johanna Billing’s performance You Don’t Love Me Yet at the Toff in Town co-ordinated by Hannah Mathews.  This event had been presented in over 20 countries since it first began in 2002 and included live versions performed by 15 of Melbourne’s most innovative rock, folk and indie bands.

ACCA Art Tours
ACCA art tours take subscribed groups to some of the most interesting art events on the international calendar. In 2009 ACCA took a group to the Asia Pacific Triennial at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Brisbane.

Multicultural Arts Program (MAP)
ACCA’s specially devised series of workshops for recently arrived young people from a variety of cultural backgrounds including refugees, took place twice in 2010. Funded by the Scanlon Foundation, and in partnership with the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CYMI), MAP provided opportunities for young immigrants to participate in an immersive arts experience across the forms of visual arts, theatre and dance. Initiated, presented and managed by ACCA, each program included sessions by collaborating partners Chunky Move, St Martins Youth Theatre and Malthouse over several weekends, culminating in a family day.

Go West North East South
This program offered students from selected schools in Melbourne’s western, northern, eastern and southern suburbs the chance to participate in ACCA’s school’s program by providing free bus transport to the gallery.

Infocube
This free digital information kiosk at ACCA provided access to archived text, sound and video information about current exhibitions throughout the year. This project was supported by the Harold Mitchell Foundation. Infocube also functioned as a communications kiosk and research facility for students and teachers. Relevant support material was uploaded prior to each exhibition season.

Art In Your Ear – Sound & Video files
Sound files were produced for each exhibition and some time lapse video files of installations also appeared at intervals on the accaonline site to complement the very successful sound files program.

ACCA Student Pathways to Art 
ACCA’s core education program was delivered by trained teachers through guided talks and discussions to students from Victorian Government, Catholic and Independent schools. Student Pathways to Art workshops focused on ACCA’s five exhibition seasons and were personalized to meet the needs of primary and secondary students so that they could interpret and understand the art and ideas presented by artists.

ACCA Digital Delivery 
ACCA produced downloadable online digital resources for students and teachers to compliment each exhibition season. Linked to the curriculum, these were designed to broaden both student and teacher knowledge of contemporary art through learning packs, soundfile interviews and discussions with artists and art professionals.

ACCA Art Partners
ACCA worked in partnership with philanthropic organisations to provide targeted learning programs linked with the Pathways to Art Program:

Go Program was developed to encourage and support the participation of students who attend lower socio-economic schools. The program improves access for students who may otherwise not have the opportunity to gain a significant cultural experience through the provision of free bus transport to and from ACCA. As an extension of this project Ardoch Youth Foundation Program partnered with ACCA to identify and support disadvantaged primary students in grades 5 and 6 who go to school in the Southern, Northern and Western regions.

Multicultural Arts Program, 2009. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Arts Immersion: Starting Points provided regionally based Year 9-12 students from Government schools with an immersive arts experience across the forms of visual arts, theatre and dance over a full day. Sessions were hosted in collaboration with Malthouse Theatre and Chunky Move.

The ARTCONNECT9 program in collaboration with the Victorian Arts Centre continued to provide Year 9 level students and teachers from Victorian Regional Government schools with a ‘Pathways to Art’ learning experience.

Look Who’s Talking
An opportunity to hear first hand from artists, curators and guest speakers, these free floor talks were held regularly on Sunday afternoons during most exhibition seasons. Discussion focused on issues arising from current exhibitions and recent developments in contemporary art.

Talk – Benjamin Armstrong, artist
22 March 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW09.

Talk – Justine Khamara, artist
22 March 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW09.

Talk – Marco Fusinato, artist
5 April 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW09.

Multicultural Arts Program, 2009. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Simon Yates, artist
12 April 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW09.

Talk – Matthew Griffin, artist
26 April 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW09.

Talk – Pat Foster and Jen Berean, artists
3 May 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW09.

Talk – Brodie Ellis, artist
17 May 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW09.

Talk – David Noonan, artist
23 August 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibition David Noonan: Scenes.

Talk – Marco Fusinato & David Rosetsky, artists
30 August 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibitions David Noonan: Scenes and Johanna Billing: Tiny Movements.

Multicultural Arts Program, 2009. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Charlotte Day, curator
6 September 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibitions David Noonan: Scenes and Johanna Billing: Tiny Movements.

Talk – Hannah Mathews, curator
13 September 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibitions David Noonan: Scenes and Johanna Billing: Tiny Movements.

Talk – Alex Pittendrigh, artist
20 September 2009
Held in conjunction with the exhibitions David Noonan: Scenes and Johanna Billing: Tiny Movements.

Lecture – Jenny Holzer, artist
19 February 2009
Artist Jenny Holzer presented a free public lecture about her work to coincide with her exhibition at ACCA. Held at the Capitol Theatre to enable maximum attendance, the event was fully subscribed.
Venue: Capitol Theatre

Lecture – Charlotte Day, curator
29 April 2009
Curator Charlotte day discussed the artists and themes in the exhibition NEW09.

Lecture – Tacita Dean, artist
17 June 2009
Artist Tacita Dean presented a free public lecture at RMIT’s Casey Plaza Theatre around the work and themes in her ACCA survey exhibtion, Tacita Dean.
Venue: RMIT University

BERLIN FILES 
3 July – 2 August 2009
ACCA presented the first of its thematic talk series, The Berlin Files, to coincide with Tacita Dean’s exhibition, consisting of talks and performances focusing on the city of Berlin. Speakers included a range of social commentators including Anna Funder, Peter Tregear, Louise Adler, Leon van Schaik and Steven Conte.

Live Music Event – Songs and poems from Berlin between the wars
3 July 2009
Robyn Archer performed between-war poems, readings and songs by German artists accompanied by pianist Michael Morley.

Talk – Leon van Schaik, architect
5 July 2009
Professor of Architecture at RMIT, Leon van Schaik speculated on what the architecture of Berlin might reveal and conceal of the city’s history. Presented as part of The Berlin Files, a focused examination of contemporary and historical Berlin, part of the ‘Look Who’s talking’ series of free floortalks, held in conjunction with the exhibition, Tacita Dean.

Talk –Steven Conte, writer
12 July 2009
Author Steven Conte discussed the melancholy and menace of late Cold War Berlin and its influences on his WWII novel, The Zookeeper’s War. Presented as part of The Berlin Files, a focused examination of contemporary and historical Berlin, part of the ‘Look Who’s talking’ series of free floortalks, held in conjunction with the exhibition, Tacita Dean.

Talk – Louise Adler, publisher
19 July 2009
Publisher Louise Adler explored the ghostly stories that connect the city of Berlin with European Jewry. Presented as part of The Berlin Files, a focused examination of contemporary and historical Berlin, part of the ‘Look Who’s talking’ series of free floortalks, held in conjunction with the exhibition, Tacita Dean.

Talk – Peter Tregear, musicia and academic
26 July 2009
Musician and Academic, Peter Tregar talked about ‘Sex and the City: Tristan and Isolde’ and the Modern(ist) imagination. Presented as part of The Berlin Files, a focused examination of contemporary and historical Berlin, part of the ‘Look Who’s talking’ series of free floortalks, held in conjunction with the exhibition, Tacita Dean.

Talk – Anna Funder, writer
2 August 2009
Journalist and author of the novel Stasiland, Anna Funder gave a personal response to Tacita Dean’s work, drawing upon her own experience of living in Berlin, as well as selected readings from Stasiland. Presented as part of The Berlin Files, a focused examination of contemporary and historical Berlin, part of the ‘Look Who’s talking’ series of free floortalks, held in conjunction with the exhibition, Tacita Dean.

Live Music Event – You Don’t Love Me Yet
16 August 2009
ACCA presented Billing’s performance ‘YOU DON’T LOVE ME YET’, which included live versions performed by 15 of Melbourne’s most innovative rock, folk and indie bands.  These performances, held at local bar The Toff in Town, could be viewed afterwards on the ACCA website.
Venue: The Toff in Town
You Don’t Love Me Yet invitation

Multicultural Arts Immersion Program, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Schools Program 
ACCA’s popular schools program continued to grow, with many repeat visitations, especially to NEW09 which has become part of the annual calendar for many schools. Over 8,000 students accessed ACCA’s program including 3,000 who attended workshops and guided tours tailored to the curriculum and presented by ACCA’s professional education staff.

Go Program
The Go West program originally supported by the Besen Foundation and targeting schools in the Western suburbs was expanded in 2008 to target schools from low socioeconomic backgrounds in other geographic areas. This was made possible through grants from other Trusts and Foundations. The program provided free buses to transport secondary school classes to ACCA for free workshops linking the exhibition program to the curriculum.

Multicultural Arts Program (MAP)
ACCA launched a new access program supported by the Scanlon Foundation and in consultation with the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY). MAP consisted of a series of intensive participatory workshops for newly arrived young people from a variety of cultural groups including refugees. ACCA partnered with its precinct neighbours Chunky Move and Malthouse Theatre to deliver workshops in the 3 art forms – visual arts, dance and theatre – led by artists in collaboration with teaching staff and youth workers from CMY.

Infocube
This new initiative, supported by the Harold Mitchell Foundation, provided an information resource in ACCA’s foyer to access articles, press, images and other background relating to current and past ACCA exhibitions.

Sound & Video Files
ACCA continued to produce recorded guides by artists and ACCA curatorial staff which can be accessed via its website and infocube. In 2008 this extended to a videofile made for the Jim Lambie exhibition.

Multicultural Arts Immersion Program, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Arts Immersion
ACCA delivered 3 workshops through the ‘Arts Immersion: Starting Points’ program in partnership with Malthouse Theatre and Chunky Move. The program increased in popularity, attracting students from a range of regional Victorian schools to undertake day workshops across the 3 art forms of visual arts, theatre and dance.

VRAP
The Victorian Arts Centre’s, VRAP9 program, in collaboration with ACCA, continued to offer regionally based Year 9 level students with the opportunity to gain access to and engage in talks about cutting-edge contemporary art.

Public Program: ‘Look Who’s Talking’ and ‘In conversation’ evenings
ACCA’s popular ‘Look Who’s Talking’ program continued with free Sunday afternoon talks by artists, curators and social commentators linked to the exhibition program. A special ‘in conversation’ evening event coincided with each season, with ACCA’s Artistic Director, Juliana Engberg talking with exhibiting artists about their work.

Talk – Paul Knight, artist
16 March 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW08.

Talk – Chris Bond, artist
30 March 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW08.

Multicultural Arts Immersion Program, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Daniel Argyle, artist
6 April 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW08.

Talk – Jonathan Jones, artist
13 April 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW08.

Talk – Matt Hinkley, artist
20 April 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW08.

Talk – Gabrielle de Vietri, artist
4 May 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW08.

Talk – Anna Macdonald, curator
11 May 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW08.

In Conversation – Juliana Engberg and Lyndal Jones
26 May 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Lyndal Jones: Darwin with Tears.

Multicultural Arts Immersion Program, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Rory O’Brien, artist
29 June 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Lyndal Jones: Darwin with Tears.

Talk – Hannah Mathews, associate curator
6 July 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Lyndal Jones: Darwin with Tears.

Talk – Lyndal Jones, artist
13 July 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Lyndal Jones: Darwin with Tears.

Talk – Juliana Engberg, curator
20 July 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Lyndal Jones: Darwin with Tears.

Talk – Danny Saunders and Benny Merris, assistants to Jim Lambie
13 July 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Jim Lambie: Eight Miles High.

Talk – Naomi Cass, curator
10 August 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Rosslynd Piggot – Extract: in 3 parts.

Multicultural Arts Immersion Program, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Rosslynd Piggot, artist
10 August 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Rosslynd Piggot – Extract: in 3 parts.

Talk – Gabrielle de Vietri
31 August 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Jim Lambie: Eight Miles High.

Talk – Sarah Guest, horticultural writer
14 September 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Rosslynd Piggot – Extract: in 3 parts.

Talk – Rebecca Coates, associate curator
10 September 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Rosslynd Piggot – Extract: in 3 parts.

Talk – Bridget Keane, academic
19 October 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Intimacy.

Talk – Caroline Lee, artist
2 November 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Intimacy.

Multicultural Arts Immersion Program, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Michael Arnold, academic
9 November 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Intimacy.

Talk – Robyn Archer, performer 
9 November 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Intimacy.

Talk – Anna Macdonald, curator
30 November 2008
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Intimacy.

Lecture – The Art of Evolution
8 June 2008
A lecture by Professor Peter Currie, developmental geneticist, presented in conjunction with the exhibition Lyndal Jones: Darwin with Tears.

Keynote Lecture – Professor Elizabeth Grosz, philosopher
14 August 2008
Renowned academic, professor Elizabeth Grosz discussed ideas pertinent to the exhibition Lyndal Jones: Darwin with Tears in her keynote lecture, held in conjunction with RMIT University.

Fundraiser – Party!
24 July 2008
Guests partied the night away at the Sofitel Hotel, swooning to the blues of Kelly Wolfgramm, and the rhythms of the The Bamboos. DJ Nick Rutherford kept everyone dancing through the night at ACCA’s annual fundraiser. Hosted by Sofitel, MC’d by Virginia Trioli and supported by Sotheby’s Australia. An auction included artwork by internationally acclaimed Australian artist, Susan Norrie.
VIP invitation

Public and education programs, 2007. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Curatorial Clinics
ACCA held three Curatorial Clinics in 2007, with a total of 36 artists meeting with members of ACCA’s curatorial team and three invited curators/artists. Gerardo Mosquera, freelance curator and art critic based in Havana and Adjunct Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, met with six emerging artists including those exhibiting in NEW07. Thirteen emerging artists from around Australia met with a panel consisting of members of the ACCA curatorial team (Juliana Engberg, Anna MacDonald and Gabrielle de Vietri) and Tony Schwensen, Curatorial Clinic alumnus and teacher at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Bristol-based independent curator and writer, Claire Doherty met with a total of 17 emerging and established artists over three days.

Schools Program 
ACCA’s popular schools program continued to grow, with many repeat visitations, especially to NEW07 which has become part of the annual calendar for many schools.  Over 8,000 students accessed ACCA’s program including 3,500 who attended workshops and guided tours tailored to the curriculum and presented by ACCA’s professional education staff.
Public and Education Programs

Go West
This 2006 initiative supported by the Besen Foundation targeted schools in the Western suburbs who may not otherwise be able to come to ACCA. The Go West program provided free buses to transport 24 secondary school classes to ACCA for free workshops linking the exhibition program to the education curriculum.

MSO/ ACCA music and art collaboration for schools
A highly successful event in April was a concert by secondary music students from Caulfield Grammar School. The students worked with staff from ACCA and MSO over a series of weeks to compose musical scores in response to the art pieces in NEW07. These were then performed for the public in the gallery spaces on a Saturday afternoon.

Art in Your Ear
This successful 2006 ACCA initiative continued with the production of 20 new recorded guides by artists and ACCA curators.

Regional Program
ACCA delivered 12 workshops through the “Arts Immersion: Starting Points” program in partnership with Malthouse Theatre and Chunky Move. The program attracted an increased number of students from a range of regional Victorian schools to undertake day workshops across the 3 art forms of visual arts, theatre and dance. The Victorian Arts Centre’s, VRAP9 program, in collaboration with ACCA, continued to offer regionally based Year 9 level students with the opportunity to gain access to and engage in talks surrounding cutting-edge contemporary art.

Look Who’s Talking 
ACCA’s Look Who’s Talking free weekend talks featured artists, curators and guest speakers in the gallery space. In 2007 this popular program continued with 18 free Sunday afternoon talks by artists, curators and social commentators linked to the exhibition program.

Talk – Peter Clarke, artist
4 February 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet.

Talk – Jonathan Green, journalist
11 February 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet.

Talk – Chris Wallace-Crabb, poet
18 February 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet.

Talk – Rebecca Coates, curator
25 February 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet.

Talk – Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, artists
18 March 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.

Venice Revisited, invitation, 2007. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Anna Macdonald, curator
25 March 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.

Talk – Christian Capurro, artist
1 April 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.

Talk – Brendan Lee, artist
15 April 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.

Talk – Anastasia Klose, artist
29 April 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.

Talk – Damiano Bertoli, artist
6 May 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.

Talk – Nick Devlin, artist
13 May 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.

Talk – Juliana Engberg, curator
20 May 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.

Talk – Kirsten von Bibra, theatre director
19 August 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.

Talk – Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, artists
26 August 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent.

Talk – Alison Bell, actress
2 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.

Talk – Nikos Papastergiadis, cultural theorist
9 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.

Talk – Robert Nelson, critic
16 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.

Talk – Charlotte Day, curator
23 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.

Talk – Juliana Engberg, curator
30 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.

29 August 2007
In honour of Australia’s largest ever involvement in the 52nd Venice Biennale, Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense, ACCA’s Artistic Director, Juliana Engberg discussed the 2007 Venice Biennale with participating Australian artists, Callum Moron, Susan Norrie and Daniel von Sturmer.
Venice Revisited invitation

A Constructed World CHANGE Forums 
These events, as part of the major, monographic survey of one of Australia’s most enduring and experimental partnerships saw the spaces of ACCA activated with ad hocery and artistic spontaneity while creating an opportunity for reflection about A Constructed World’s evolving body of work:

ACW Performance – The Melbourne Complaints Choir
3 June 2007
A choir of singers and non-singers performed a song full of complaints in the first installment from the Melbourne chapter of the Helsinki Complaints Choir
http://www.complaintschoir.org/

ACW Forum: Open Call Video Salon
6 June 2007
Artists were invited to show their video works at ACCA, and have them discussed by a panel including an artist, a critic and someone from another profession.

ACW Performance: Truck Dance
9 June 2007
A flat-bed truck travelled around Melbourne’s CBD laden with estactic dancers (referencing ACDC’s 1976 performance on a truck of ‘It’s a long way to the top’).

ACW Forum: Collectivity
10 June 2007
Open invitation to discuss the idea of ‘Collectivity’, and whether there are any real benefits from working together.

ACW Forum: Publications Open Call
13 June 2007
A Constructed World invited artists and independent publishers to present their print projects to an audience.

ACW Forum: We live in an environment of publishing without publishers.
17 June 2007
A Constructed World invited the audience to discuss the self-publishing industry, in particular art book publishing.

ACW Forum: The changing audience for contemporary art.
20 June 2007
Who is the audience for contemporary art?

ACW Forum: Losers and Failure
24 June 2007
What is the-role-in-culture for those who don’t get selected, accepted, chosen, acknowledged?

ACW Forum: Politics and Art in Australia
27 June 2007
Are these overlapping fields, or separate concerns. Who is interested?

ACW Performance: Explaining contemporary art to live eels
30 June 2007
Based on a Joseph Beuys work How to explain pictures to a dead hare (1965), which was concerned with explaining what was unknowable.

Arts Immersion Program, 13 November, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Curatorial Clinics
Support was received from the Myer Foundation towards the continuation and expansion of ACCA’s extremely successful Curatorial Clinics.  In 2006 ACCA conducted four clinics with curatorial panels that included ACCA staff alongside invited international curators. International visitors included curators from The Netherlands, Slovenia, China, Phillipines, Italy, Lithuania and the UK. Some 46 artists participated in the program and several artists were invited to participate in later exhibitions and events as a result of discussing their work with the panels.

Education 
In 2006 ACCA’s schools program achieved increased attendances across Victoria and interstate in all sectors of the community. Overall ACCA held 267 free student floortalks for secondary and tertiary students as well as teacher groups that year. The number of school visits was significantly up on 2005, and there was a notable 200% leap in attendance during the exhibition Barbara Kruger.

Go West
In 2006, in direct response to research reflecting low student attendances to ACCA from Western suburbs schools, and with support from the Besen Foundation, ACCA launched Go West. This unique program provided schools with free bus travel to and from ACCA, a guided tour and resources to support learning about contemporary art and ideas.

Art in Your Ear
ACCA’s successful online program of sound files continued with 27 downloadable MP3 sound-files of artists and curators recorded and uploaded onto ACCA’s website, providing knowledge resource and international online access for students, teachers, artists colleagues and the general public. In 2006 ACCA also provided visitors with the opportunity to borrow iPod Nano’s with pre-recorded audio files for visitors to listen to artists discussing the ideas behind their work, while viewing exhibitions.

Arts Immersion Program, 13 November, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Arts Immersion
Following the successful pilot project Arts Immersion: Starting Points in 2005, ACCA continued to work with the Malthouse Theatre and Chunky Move dance company on this innovative program. Eighteen creative workshops were presented during the course of the year, giving Year 11 and 12 students the opportunity to work directly with practicing contemporary artists within each of the three organisations. The program’s success in 2006 saw it attract triennial funding from the Ian Potter Foundation for 2007-2009.

Regional Program
In collaboration with the Victorian Arts Centre, ACCA continued its involvement in the Victorian Regional Arts Program in 2006. Regionally-based Year 9 students had the opportunity to visit ACCA to engage in a range of talks around contemporary art practices and ideas.

Resources
ACCA’s resource table, developed in 2005 to accompany each exhibition season, remained a successful and positive addition to ACCA’s foyer. Resource material, including catalogues, press releases, brochures and other information relating to exhibiting artists was provided for study and research purposes.

Internships
ACCA continued to support Year 10 students who demonstrated a particular interest in the arts with annual work experience internships, mentoring 2 students from Bairnsdale Secondary College and St Leonard’s College, Melbourne in 2006.

In Conversations
During 2006 ACCA presented five In Conversation after-hour events. These events provided the opportunity for teachers and the broader arts community to hear ACCA’s Artistic Director and curators in conversation with exhibiting artists and special guests, discussing and exploring issues and ideas about contemporary art practice in Australia and overseas:

In Conversations – Juliana Engberg in conversation with Louise Adler, publisher
13 February 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Barbara Kruger.

In Conversations – Juliana Engberg in conversation with artists Helen Johnson, Natasha Johns-Messenger and Laresa Kosloff
3 April 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW06.

Arts Immersion Program, 13 November, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

In Conversations – Juliana Engberg in conversation with artists  Michael Leunig and Lida Abdul
29 May 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition The Unquiet World.

In Conversations – Rebecca Coates in conversation with artists Hany Armanious and Alex Pittendrigh
14 August 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Uncanny Nature.

Look Who’s Talking
ACCA’s popular weekend Look Who’s Talking program, presented for each exhibition season, continued in 2006. Twenty-six talks were presented featuring a diverse range of speakers including:

Talk – John Daly
12 February 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Barbara Kruger.

Talk – Louise Adler, publisher
19 February 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Barbara Kruger.

Talk – Juliana Engberg, curator
26 February 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Barbara Kruger.

Talk – Anna MacDonald, curator
19 March 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW06.

Talk – Natasha Johns-Messenger, artist
26 March 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW06.

Talk – Helen Johnson, artist
2 April 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW06.

Arts Immersion Program, 13 November, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Shaun Wilson, artist
9 April 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW06.

Talk – Giles Ryder, artist
23 April 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW06.

Talk – Laresa Kosloff, artist
30 April 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW06.

Talk – Michael Lunig, artist
4 Jun 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition The Unquiet World.

Talk – Peter Tyndal, artist
18 June 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition The Unquiet World.

Talk – Callum Morton and Marco Fusinato, artists
25 June 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition The Unquiet World.

Talk – Susan Norrie, artist
16 July 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition The Unquiet World.

Talk – Juliana Engberg, curator
23 July 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition The Unquiet World.

Talk – Alex Pittendrigh, artist
27 August 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Uncanny Nature.

Arts Immersion Program, 13 November, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Talk – Richard Giblett, artist
10 September 2006
Held in conjunction with the Uncanny Nature.

Talk – Rebecca Coates, curator
24 September 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Uncanny Nature. 

Talk – Dr Daniel Palmer, academic
8 October 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Gillian Wearing: Living Proof.

Talk – Max Gillies
22 October 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Gillian Wearing: Living Proof. 

Talk – Sue Ford, artist
12 November 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Gillian Wearing: Living Proof.

Talk – Dr Anne Marsh, academic
19 November 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Gillian Wearing: Living Proof.

Talk – Kate Daw, artist
26 Nov 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Gillian Wearing: Living Proof.

Talk – Juliana Engberg, curator
3 Dec 2006
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Gillian Wearing: Living Proof.

Fundraiser – Zing! Went the Strings of my Heart
26 April 2006
ACCA’s annual fundraiser for 2006 in association with the Melbourne Jazz Festival was a soiree of contemporary music and art featuring the award winning musicians Marshall McGuire and Genevieve Lacey.
Zing! Went the Strings of my Heart invitation
Zing! Went the Strings of my Heart program

If, Then, Maybe…, invitation, 2006. Courtesy ACCA Archive

Tour – ACCA at the 2006 Biennale of Sydney
15 – 16 July 2006
ACCA took visitors on an exclusive two-day tour of the 15th Biennale of Sydney, Zones of Contact, Curated by Charles Merewether. The tour was led by Artistic Director, Juliana Engberg.
ACCA at the 2006 Biennale of Sydney invitation

Pop Up Exhibition – If, Then, Maybe…
21 – 24 September 2006
ACCA joined with architecture students from RMIT, the Urban Design branch of the Department of Sustainability and Environment, and the City of Melbourne to present If Then Maybe, a weekend display of future focused urban design schemes, focusing on the possible rejuvenation of Grant Street/Southbank Arts precinct. Architecture students presented a range of re-invented environments including a sequence of playing fields giving onto a tadpole of commerce and a boulevard of boutiques and gardens. Grant-street-of-the-future was imagined as a place for community, environment and commercial revitalization.  This special exhibition, which included the work of eight students, was presented in the ACCA foyer from September 21 to September 24 2006.
Curator: Simon Drysdale
Venue: ACCA Foyer

Lecture – Mike Nelson, artist
25 October 2006
UK Artist Mike Nelson presented a lecture on his practice and 2006 ACCA exhibition Lonely Planet to students and members of the public at RMIT.

Susan Norrie, Blossom, 2002. Courtesy the artist and ACCA Archive

By Juliana Engberg

ACCA’s large gallery hall still seems generous of scale and offers amazing opportunities for commissioned artists.  But when the new ACCA was first unveiled, the shift in volumetric space from the domestic size of the cottage to the magnificence of the Sturt Street building appeared dramatic and ground- breaking for an Australian gallery concentrating on contemporary art.

The architecture of ACCA’s main hall is that of a tapering viewing box: the end of the room being taller and broader than the front – a perspective trick.  In my mind an architecturally occurring, cinematically organised gesture.  For the inaugural commission it seemed important to select an artist to claim the back wall and bring attention to the room’s longitude and towering terminating point.

To me it was critical that the first commission for this operatically scaled hall should be undertaken by an Australian artist so as to mark the transition from constrained to ambitious art making on behalf of local practitioners.  It also struck me as necessary that the artist would need to be someone with maturity and poise of practice to meet the challenge of the space and occasion.  I invited acclaimed artist, Susan Norrie, to undertake the task of breaking in the new ACCA.  Associate curator, Rebecca Coates worked as the project manager.

Susan Norrie, Dust Storm, 2002. Courtesy the artist and ACCA Archive

When Susan made her site visit, like many after her, she said WOW!  The room was instantly impressive – and just a bit daunting – as it is, even now.  Susan went away and commenced her plans which eventuated in her iconic work UNDERTOW – a brilliant, atmospheric video piece incorporating film footage of man-made and natural disasters – a work bringing attention to, and foretelling the calamities of climate change and corporate negligence.

The work built a mood of dark sublimity, anchored by a hypnotic sound track designed by Robert Hindley with a bell tolling.  Melbourne’s historic dust storm of 1983 – an event of apocalyptic character – was recast as an eerie, surreal occurrence and earth and water were torched and smoldering.  Elsewhere in the space, smaller video vignettes showed oil-soaked birds – victims of the Exxon Valdez disaster, white-clad environmental scientists attempting a clean up, and hot mud bubbles.  These motifs would continue to re-surface in Susan’s works throughout the 2000s as a message about the world in geological distress.  At the front of the space, a redemptive message was conveyed with a video of a child being carried aloft through cherry blossom.

Walking into Susan’s work for the very first time when we activated the long beam video projector was a thrill.  An image some 8 meters high and 14 meters across seemed to double the size of the space.  It was clear we had an international scaled gallery for local as well as international work.

Susan Norrie, Balloon, 2002. Courtesy the artist and ACCA Archive

Susan’s work registered a major shift in the possibility of practice in the new ACCA.  Since that time we have commissioned 15 major works for the ACCA Kunsthalle including those of Callum Morton, Daniel von Sturmer, David Rosetzky, Jim Lambie, Berlinde de Bruykere, David Noonan, Monica Sosnowska, Nathan Coley, Pipilotti Rist, Niki Savvas, Chesworth and Leber among others.  Each has been memorable and different.  But it was Susan Norrie who set the bar high in the first instance.

Susan Norrie: Undertow
14 October – 2 December 2002

Juliana Engberg is the Artistic Director of ACCA.

<back to 2002

27 February, The Age, Tarrawarra selects its curator
1 March, The Age, The state of the arts
27 May, Art & Australia, The situation now
5 August, Financial Review, Major donations keep living art alive in galleries
5 August, The Age, ACCA, Big Brother is giving you $300,000
August, The Monthly, Children of the revolutions
December, Prestige Magazine, Artspace Race

Major donations keep living art live in galleries, Financial Review, 5 August, 2008. Courtesy ACCA Archive

By Hannah Mathews

“With its cascading, geometric facades like jagged, rusty-red cliffs, and its stark desert-like setting, the new ACCA designed by Melbourne architects Wood Marsh, does indeed seem like an ancient geological outcrop that has enigmatically emerged on Sturt Street Southbank. In design, size, prominence and cost, the centre could not be more removed from the ACCA of old – a charming cottage tucked away in a leafy corner of South Yarra.”[i]– Gabriela Coslovich, The Age, 2002

ACCA’s building has been likened to many things – the mysterious monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the fantastic landscapes of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi flicks, Plato’s mystical cave, the iconic land formation Uluru and the quintessential Aussie outback shed, amongst others.

Part of the former Kennett government’s spend on arts infrastructure (which also included the Melbourne Museum and Federation Square incorporating ACMI and the NGV Australia), ACCA’s new building was realised at a cost of a modest $11.3 million. The new building marked a turning point in the organisation’s history with increased potential for ambitiously scaled art projects, larger audiences and a significantly increased profile.

Comprising four galleries defined by varying dimensions and guiding angles (aptly described by Coslovich as “inverted swimming pools sloping from shallow to deep”), ACCA’s new exhibition spaces have inspired responses from artists that range from the ambitious and inquiring, to the monumental and playful. Constantly reinventing itself with the presentation of each exhibition, ACCA’s galleries have become known for their chameleon like quality.

Hannah Mathews is an Associate Curator at ACCA.

In the Press

7 January, Art Forum, First Take
21 February, The Age, Aussie numbers up for Biennale
1 March, The Age, Moving house in Venice Biennale
3 March, unknown publication, Aussie gets prize appointment
2 April, Time, Making a splash in the canal zone
24 April, Herald Sun, Biennale’s bigger picture
26 April, The Age, City to get boulevard of arts
6 September, The Australian, All within a hop, skip and dance
Spring, Art & Australia, Searchin’ yeah searchin’

Other Material

ACCA pledge brochure

City to get boulevard of arts, The Age, 26 April, 2007. Courtesy ACCA Archive

ACCA at the 2006 Biennale of Sydney, VIP invitation. Courtesy ACCA Archive

In the Press

22 January, The Sunday Age, Welcome to Melbourne the world’s designer city
22 April, Good Weekend: The Arts & Culture Issue, Masters of the Arts
25 April, Herald Sun, Banking on arts revival
29 April, Herald Sun, Art stars come out for ACCA
24 May, Herald Sun, Three into Biennale will go: figure!
24 May, The Age, Three to show at Venice Biennale
1 July, The Age, Build on it and they will come
Jun-Aug, Frieze, What writing has most influenced the way you think about art
Winter, Leadership Victoria Magazine, Leadership in the Arts
November, Driven, Contemporary Culture
undated, The Australian Financial Review Magazine, Callum Morton

Other Material

ACCA at the 2006 Biennale of Sydney, VIP invitation

By Kay Campbell

When I flew back to Melbourne from the UK for my interview for the position of Executive Director of ACCA in June 2002, I drove past the nearly completed Wood Marsh building and was filled with excitement. Here, I thought, was a building of ambition and promise, a real statement about Melbourne’s place in the contemporary art world, scaled to enable ambition and substance.

Shortly afterwards I discovered that ACCA would inhabit only a third of the building and that the budget fell far short of the ambition implied by the brief.  But by then I was hooked – inspired by the potential, the challenge, and the opportunity to work with one of Australia’s best curators, Juliana Engberg, who was working at that time as the artistic consultant for ACCA’s future exhibition program.

The concept of a Museum of Contemporary Art, as achieved in Sydney by 2002, seemed a slower, more cumbersome model.  The new ACCA was envisaged as a kunsthalle from the very start.  Quick, lean, responsive to art practice and well-fitted to Melbourne’s art-world, which was comprised of a vibrant network of artists, contemporary art spaces and ARI’s, but needed to look out from itself.  It was important to differentiate ACCA from smaller spaces, like Gertrude Street, CCP, Westspace, Heide and the university galleries. ACCA’s new focus was ambitious – to bring the world’s best international artists to Melbourne, to provide significant platforms for local artists and to grow the audience for contemporary art.

By thinking of ACCA as a kunsthalle – a European model with an emphasis on commissioning for spaces – we gave ourselves permission to concentrate on working with artists and audiences, rather than being constrained by fixed exhibition spaces and all of the bureaucracy that goes along with looking after a collection.

Nevertheless the opportunity was also the challenge. It may have only been a portion of the Wood Marsh building, but the new ACCA was 359% bigger than the old cottage in the park!  Like many ambitious capital projects by government, this one lacked the rigorous business planning required to ascertain ongoing running costs. The goal to grow audiences was not matched by a marketing budget. There was no capacity to grow the team, and whilst we had a curator with high level international connections, the cost of freight and large-scale installations was beyond our capacity.  

Our survival depended on careful and strategic allocation of limited funds, key partnerships, effective fundraising and a dedicated team.  The Visual Arts Crafts Strategy (VACS) funding from State and Federal Government, which came out of the Myer enquiry in 2004, helped to stabilise ACCA’s situation.  ACCA’s VACS allocation was modest, but the timing was a relief, enabling us to invest in key staff and programming. Within two years we had more than doubled the value of the VACS investment with income generated through philanthropy and sponsorship. 

Without the early support of the community and visionary partnerships with organisations – like the Melbourne Festival, who supported our groundbreaking first season including Susan Norrie’s massive and mesmerising Undertow; the Myer Foundation who provided seed funding to establish the annual NEW exhibition and the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust who established our career shifting annual commission for artists – ACCA may not have endured.    

But endure it did. In the first year visitor numbers increased by 300% and since then the audience for ACCA’s programs has continued to increase annually. Its exhibitions, commissions and off-site projects remain ambitious. Our education program is huge and our popular public engagement program delivers unique multi-platform engagement with art and ideas. ACCA now raises nearly 70% of its annual budget, and, like most contemporary arts organisations assisted by VACS funding 10 years ago, we are now at a new critical stage.  Further government investment is needed to respond to rising costs and increasing visitor demands.  The future will be shaped by evolving and adapting in this new environment.

Kay Campbell is the Executive Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.