By NOEL MURPHY
ART is a curious thing. It lets us find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time, someone once wrote.
And if there’s a curious place to get lost in Geelong, it’s the city’s art gallery.
The hallowed chambers of the Little Malop St institution – one of the nation’s oldest and leading galleries – host some remarkable artistic expressions collected over the past century and more.
Among its finest are Australian works such as Eugène von Guérard’s The Barter, The Weatherboard Falls and View of Geelong, Louis Buvelot’s On the Woods Point Road, Frederick McCubbin’s A Bush Burial, and Russell Drysdale’s Hill End.
The greatest strengths of the gallery’s permanent collection are colonial paintings including an array of early images of Geelong and its wider region such as John Skinner Prout’s lithograph Geelong, and Alexander Webb’s Yarra Street, Geelong.
Colonial metalwork such as Edward Fischer’s Geelong gold cup (1890), works on paper from the 19th Century to the present, and contemporary Australian paintings, sculpture and decorative arts round out a striking catalogue of major works.
Smaller but also fine holdings of British and European paintings include The Pier Head by Alexander Stanhope Forbes, The Babylonian Maid by Edwin Long, Reading the Bible by Thomas Faed, and Benjamin Leader’s On the Thames.
The gallery was opened in 1896 and is presently looking to expand its exhibition, storage and preparation space. In the meantime, the new library/heritage centre being built next door will offer some respite.
It will be connected to the gallery’s foyer, allowing a purpose-designed special exhibition space for the gallery’s use until its own redevelopment can be achieved.
In addition, the new heritage centre will offer the gallery some additional basement storage space and the shared loading bay.
The gallery presents a full program of exhibitions, First Friday lectures, floor talks, education and school holiday programs and a range of valuable sector and community activities.
