Loretta Lux, The Waiting Girl Image via ACCA
The Michael Buxton Centre of Contemporary Art Museum announced last week is causing great public excitement with the promise of a new museum at Southbank to house a collection of 300 significant Australian contemporary works.
But around the corner at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) there has been little time to think about the new neighbour. It’s all hands on deck this week as the team installs the new summer show Menagerie which opens tomorrow.
Far from feeling threatened by the new Centre, the ACCA team believes the new Buxton Centre of Contemporary Art has just served to highlight the difference in and importance of ACCA’s role.
The distinction between the two institutions can be explained in the prepositions. The Buxton is a Centre of Contemporary Art. It will house Michael Buxton’s important collection of works by some of the most significant and recognised living Australian artists – Mike Parr, Pat Brassington, Bill Henson, Emily Floyd and even a few who are no longer living like Howard Arkley. As part of the University of Melbourne, it will also serve an education role.
ACCA is a Centre for Contemporary Art. Its role is to commission, promote and enable the making of contemporary art by both established and emerging artists, both Australian and international. ACCA has no collection. It is a ‘kunsthalle’, an exhibition space which last year celebrated its 30th birthday.
ACCA enables contemporary Australian artists to create and exhibit and to do so within the context of an international space. Artistic Director Juliana Engberg, who is also Artistic Director of the Biennale of Sydney, is known for creating thematic exhibitions which bring together the best current work from both Australia and overseas.
Menagerie is a typical example. The exhibition ‘explores the human tendency to anthropomorphise through animals and their behaviours as a process of metaphoric discovery of the self.’ Significant international contemporary artists in Menagerie include Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, whose Venice Biennale work Turisti (Tourists) featured 2,000 taxidermied pigeons, and British video artist Lucy Gunning, whose work The Horse Impressionists is a loop of five women doing impressions of horses.
Australian artists in Menagerie include Anastasia Klose, who will create a live event called Farnsworth’s Republic of Dogs from 16 – 28 February 2015, along with Patricia Piccinini, Ricky Swallow, David Noonan, Deborah Kelly and Abdul Rahman-Abdullah.
Piccinini, Swallow and Noonan all have older work that is in the Buxton collection, but ACCA provides them with new commissions as it does for emerging artists like Abdullah and Klose.
Executive Director of ACCA Kay Campbell said both collections like Buxton’s and commissioning exhibition spaces like ACCA are necessary to support successful and sustainable arts practice.
‘For us it just emphasises the distinctiveness of our spaces for creating and exhibition contemporary work. The Buxton collection is contemporary but they are works that have already been created. ACCA is about the future and the now.’
She said ACCA was proud there were a number of ACCA commissions in the Buxton collection including Daniel Von Sturmer’s The Truth Effect, Patricia Piccinini’s Game Boys, Larissa Koslov’s Spirit and Muscle, Stuart Ringholt’s Circle Heads, Rachael Ormella’s Davey Street Hobart. There are also works that Michael Buxton saw for the first time at ACCA.
While ACCA’s approximately $3 million annual budget looks paltry compared to the $26 million cost of establishing the new museum the comparison is meaningless. Most of the new funds cover the value of the collection (about $10 million) and the new building.
Campbell said ACCA was pleased to have contemporary art centre in the precinct and she hopes it will create something of an art trail with visitors moving between the National Gallery of Victoria, Buxton Centre and ACCA.
‘We are very happy about it. One of the things our visitor surveys tell us is that they want more activity in the area, particularly more galleries and cafes.’
