By NOEL MURPHY
GEELONG Gallery is gate-crashing its way into the City’s new $45 million library and heritage dome.
Before building has even started on the controversial Johnstone Park centre, a “temporary solution” to the art gallery’s space problems has been brokered with City Hall ensuring the some 220square metres will be partitioned for artwork.
The move is purportedly aimed at helping the gallery work up larger exhibitions but has not been backed by any business case and follows lengthy speculation that the gallery would try to encroach on the new building.
The City’s arts and culture portfolio holder Cr Michelle Heagney this week said the gallery was “severely limited” in the exhibitions it could hold “due to physical space”.
Cr Heagney said the “shared exhibition space” would revert back to the library “in future years”.
Gallery director Geoffrey Edwards said working up a business case was a crucial next step forward to further development options and displaying more of its permanent collection and enhancing its public programs.
Cr Heagney pointed to a 2010 report that broached the idea of expanding into the new library or building a new gallery elsewhere.
“We have also identified another option of expanding into a new wing that could be constructed on the plaza next to City Hall.”
In the meantime, Geelong Gallery is staging an exhibition of ceramic artist Stephen Bowers’ work, “Beyond Bravura – JamFactory Icon 2013” blending art historical references with Australiana motifs and icons from popular culture. Think kangaroos and parrots, surfboards and the bush.
