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A movable cultural centre

By Victoria Laurie

10 December 2007 - AFTER listening to artist George Wallaby talk about his traditional country at Lake Gregory, Alan Dodge felt he had understood the Kimberley artist's love of the Great Sandy Desert. "I bought one of his paintings and I can't go to bed without standing and looking at it for a while," he says.

Retiring director Alan Dodge with one of his favourites, Monnop, by Christopher Pease
The American-born director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia began in the job 11 years ago, bringing with him expertise in European and US contemporary art. When he retires on Friday, he will take with him a deep admiration for Australian indigenous art and a desire to see it honoured in what he calls an indigenous centre for excellence.

Dodge has spent part of his last months in the position drawing up a draft document, which he has released to The Australian. He describes it as a multitiered initiative that could lead to a nationally important indigenous collection, and possibly a new building.

"Anyone in this field can't help but be touched by the fabulous creativity that comes out of indigenous communities," says Dodge, who has visited several of them. "I think the advantage Perth has is that it's the gateway to some of the most cogent and interesting communities, like Balgo, Warmun and Texas Downs.

"I know people can't go in their thousands to those communities - and also you don't want to put them on display like that - but wouldn't it be wonderful if you could go to an urban area as a gateway and have exposure on a multifaceted level to indigenous art and culture before you go out and see that country?"

For the moment, Dodge is not fixated on a separate, monolithic institution of the kind that has been mooted elsewhere. In 1999, a former deputy chairman of the National Gallery of Victoria, Jim Cousins, ran an unsuccessful bid to lure the US-based Guggenheim Foundation into creating a landmark indigenous art gallery in Geelong. Last year, he reiterated his view that Australia needed such an institution, amid rumours that an indigenous art museum could be located at Melbourne's Federation Square or the Docklands.

Dodge is cautious about the wisdom of setting up a single entity.

"The things I've heard so far seem to be centred on what I call 'engulf and devour' type building of gallery space and putting collections in them. But there has to be more to it than that. What is more important to me is that it's not just a new gallery space but it actually has programs of interpretation run by indigenous people."

His five-year plan aims first to increase training of indigenous art workers in curating and conserving works.

"I would love to see in future the Hettie Perkinses, Brenda Crofts and (AGWA's indigenous curator) Clotilde Bullens of the world developing what they want out of this together, across the country," says Dodge.

A second step would be to increase the art gallery's already sizeable collection with more works from the Western Desert, Kimberley and South West communities.

"But there are people with far bigger pockets buying this material for private reasons than we can compete with," Dodge says. "I think it would make a stunning exhibition. Western Australia has collectively probably one of the greatest collections of indigenous art in the world. The idea would be to form a curatorial committee to work on putting together the very best and putting them side by side. Eventually, we could lend back and forth to each other."

It would be difficult to build the whole structure all at once, he admits.

"It could be a conservation centre of indigenous art, maybe an interpretation centre that talks about the stories and how Aboriginal people see land. And it may be nowhere near (Perth's) cultural precinct but somewhere else. The decision would be made by indigenous groups themselves."

Richard Walley, a Nyoongar artist, performer and former Australia Council board member, says the idea has been well received by local community members, but they want a living place where stories are told.

"The unfortunate thing is that Aboriginal art has become an asset and not an expression of living culture," Walley says.

"We don't want a static museum or gallery; it's got to have life in it."

Past and present should co-exist, he says: cultural items could be displayed in a central location but a separate place could offer visiting artists a place to stay and work. "A lot of people don't like working inside buildings. They prefer an outdoor space, where they're not under the microscope."

Walley's comments mirror the argument of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, whose life inspired the spectacular Tjibaou Cultural Centre, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, in New Caledonia. Of his native Kanak culture, Tjibaou wrote that it was constantly evolving and should not be fixed by archeological concepts of culture. "Our identity lies ahead of us," he wrote.

Walley has given advice to the art gallery and the Committee for Perth, a business-led lobby group pushing the idea of an indigenous centre to promote Perth tourism. Last year the group invited art patron Cousins - also a member of the Committee for Melbourne, who has overseen the building of Southbank's new recital hall - to Perth to share his expertise in getting large cultural infrastructure projects off the ground.

Cousins says Perth is as good a place as any for a national indigenous art centre, although it is off the international tourist trail. Still, he has offered to help.

"I went over and said, 'These are 10-year projects and if you've got the money, I can come and show you how to do it'."

Cousins, who retains the rights to the Guggenheim Bid company name, still favours the notion of one iconic focal point for Australian indigenous art, with lesser art centres elsewhere.

"Just imagine if we had a Bilbao-type building full of the best indigenous art. Then there could be a screen saying, 'And now visit these other wonderful collections around Australia'."

John Stanton, the director of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, is not taken with either Dodge's or Cousins's views, which he calls "a one-stop shop Aboriginal culture centre". "I don't see having a single unitary site as the way to go," he says. "I tend to think it would be preferable to have a multiplicity of sites, a web of common interest and endeavour."

He argues that since indigenous culture is evenly spread across the nation, from Cape York to southeast Victoria, from the Kimberley to Alice Springs, so too should its great art. What's more, a major focus of Aboriginal art is already emerging at the National Gallery in Canberra, which is building 10 new galleries solely to house indigenous artefacts and paintings.

Stanton is busy trying to find a new home for the 10,000 artworks and 26,000 photographs in the Berndt collection, temporarily housed in cupboards and storerooms at the University of WA. This month the university will firm up its plans for a new building, which Stanton views less as a future tourist magnet than a cultural centre for scholarship and access to remote communities.

"The feedback I've got from many Aboriginal people is that they are not looking for a single centre but a network of shared interests," Stanton says, adding that electronic links connect the remotest places, such as Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land, to the Berndt collection.

"We are working with the Buku-Larnggay Mulka art centre and developing a digital search engine to interlink Yirrkala with us, the Australian National University and the Museum of Victoria," he says.

People from Yirrkala also go to Perth to research cultural items in the Berndt collection and are being taught to scan and digitise materials in their own collection: "We're training people in their own communities to handle collections and historic documents."

Such initiatives give weight to the argument that, in the digital era, a virtual centre for indigenous culture could be preferable to a material one. Dodge says the gallery's Indigenous Centre for Excellence would also link up with remote art centres. "I've always had this mantra: big picture, achievable bits. You can't go in and build the whole structure all at once," he says.

"I am stimulated by the fact that so many people and galleries are looking at this seriously. There's great potential for us all to work across the nation and develop concepts in many different ways and places.

"But we are at the gateway of one of the most important parts of indigenous country, and I can't imagine we wouldn't want to play a part."

Cousins says if West Australians want to grab the concept, they had better move fast: "I think it's good as a concept, but it's like a race. It's a question of who does it first."

Source: The Australian

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