Quo Vadis
1994–2004: The Snelling Years
David Broker
Scandals and controversy are intrinsic to the successful contemporary art space and thirty years after Roy Churcher won the Garden City Art Show with a work that, according to the Courier-Mail, 'took the public for a ride', little seems to have changed. In 2004, View through to the Other Side of the World, a work by English artist-in-residence Eric Snell, moved Sunday Mail reporter Jessica Lawrence to write, 'Queenslanders are now the proud owners of a $20,000 hole'.1 Part of a general bash on arts funding the 'hole' attracted the attention of electronic media and IMA staff soon found themselves defending the work to the Australian Taxpayer's Association and viewers of Channel 9's Today Show.
If little has changed in the world of newspaper reportage, in the realm of visual culture a great deal has changed. Based on the childhood memory of attempting to dig a hole on a Guernsey beach that would reach Australia, Snell used two screens connected by the internet to transform myth into 'virtual reality'. What could be less offensive or more fascinating than looking into a hole and seeing audiences in 'the gallery' at St Peter Port? Ironically this was one of the IMA's least controversial and most accessible projects, launched simultaneously by Aunty Valda Coolwell (a member of the Aboriginal Council of Elders) in Brisbane and His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey.
Interestingly, works by Luke Roberts depicting Pope Alice pleasuring an aroused angel in Clutch (1996) and Chris Howlett's graphic inclusion of a beheading in Iraq in Weapons on the Wall (2004) scarcely raised an eyebrow. Similarly, Pat Hoffie's opprobrious critique of the Howard Government's treatment of 'illegal' refugees in Drift (2004) and Patricia Piccinini's Your Time Starts Now (1996), which posited the idea of a commercially viable genetically engineered baby, barely caused a ripple. If it seems that only the cost of art rather than the content can create controversy, however, then we should think again. In 2002, Roderick Bunter's Never Screw with Lassie's Closeup was attacked by a knife wielding 'Christian warrior' effectively destroying the work. On a website ominously titled Descent into Darkness, a paramilitary 'hero' claimed that the IMA was in league with the Queensland Government (and the devil) in its 'encouragement' of child abuse. Interestingly, in response to a crime fuelled by misguided child psychologists, Bunter explained that this work was actually about the hypocrisy of 'morals campaigners'. No matter that a nearby work by Ben Frost, White Children Playing: Late 1990s (1999), showed children injecting heroin while a plane crashed in the background. If scandal and controversy are a mark of the contemporary arts organisation's ability to keep abreast of trends and public taste during the period from 1994 to 2004, the Snelling years, the IMA often got it right. What eventually became clear is that, with sex, politics, and religion all but off the agenda, it was almost impossible to predict what would offend and why.
The real scandal of the 1990s, of course, was the IMA's abject lodgings. When Michael Snelling arrived in Brisbane in 1994, he dreamed of a world-class gallery that would forever change the notion of the IMA as a marginal and scruffy art space for artists whose work might be edgy but could never be taken seriously in the changing international arena. The process had begun with former Director Nick Tsoutas and the Queensland Centre for Visual Culture (QCVC) in the early 1990s and the baton was carried by Snelling as Director and Pat Hoffie who was Chair from 1993 to 1996.
By the mid 1990s, the warehouse at 608 Ann Street was well past its use-by date. As far as possible from a white cube, this was an extremely difficult environment to work in, with brick walls, uneven floors, no kitchen facilities, no storage or loading area, and dodgy wiring. Artists and staff sweltered in the summer heat while battling biblical plagues of rats and cockroaches. When it looked like rain, it was necessary to remove works from the walls to safer ground, the only problem being one could never be sure where the safer ground was. If floods, potential pestilence, and heat waves weren't enough, there was raw sewerage. Just months before the move to the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, the IMA's worst fears were realised. One Saturday afternoon early in 2001, as visitors from the United States arrived, sewerage poured into Gallery 2 courtesy of a visitor who had flushed his shirt down the toilet and into a deteriorating system. While the accommodation battle had already been won, the Ann Street premises continued its propensity for dramatic public calamity until the very last moment.
When Rob Kelly, then Managing Partner of Gadens Lawyers, became Chair in 1996, it was precisely to lobby government on the accommodation issue. Snelling had already brought together a consortium of organisations with dire accommodation issues—including the IMA, Kooemba Jdarra, La Boite Theatre, Rock 'n' Roll Circus (now Circa), Elision, Arterial, and Expressions—who first went to Joan Sheldon, Treasurer, Minister for the Arts, Deputy Premier and Leader of the Queensland Liberal Party, with a view to impressing upon her the difficulties of developing Queensland's cultural product in an environment of squalor. Her vision for the arts in Queensland and a perfect portfolio (Treasury and Arts) ensured a sympathetic ear and thus the notion of a new contemporary arts centre was born again. When the Coalition lost power in 1998, the work was continued by Labour's Minister for Justice and the Arts, Matt Foley who with great tenacity and determination was finally able to make the dream a reality.
Producing an energetic program of events while building an arts centre proved to be no easy task, especially when the present accommodation provided challenges at every turn. As Snelling's determination sometimes bordered on obsession he was also faced with the task of addressing the dominant concerns in Australian art and their representation through the IMA's program. From the late 1980s the visual arts had been in a period of monumental change. Artists no longer brought paintings or sculptures into the gallery that could be neatly placed or simply hung on walls. The IMA's previous director Nicholas Tsoutas had facilitated a taste for complex installation and generated an environment where Brisbane could lead Australia in the area of performance.
Snelling's priorities for the artistic program were local, national, and international in that order. The move away from the IMA's reputation as an Institute of Melbourne Art began during the Tsoutas years and was further consolidated during the 1990s. Snelling resolutely championed the promotion of Queensland artists through a publications program and the provision of opportunities for Indigenous and emerging artists while also generating an engagement with contemporary art in the diverse nations of the Asian continent. Space and equipment for the burgeoning production of 'new media' works was also given priority. In the area of services he, like Tsoutas, drove a program of activities that would include regional Queensland. New audiences would be reached through ephemeral public art projects and the expansion of a struggling education program for secondary schools. Importantly, he also ensured that the IMA maintained its social responsibilities with memorable openings and the introduction of annual members cocktail parties that, in their early days, would rival the legendary Spring Hill Baths party of the Tsoutas years.
Snelling's view was expansive and throughout his directorship the IMA was sometimes criticised for what appeared to be lack of direction. In truth there were many directions that for the less myopic were, in fact, a direction. Importantly, he challenged Queensland's artists to produce work that would hold its own on the international stage. While a number of Brisbane-based artists had made a significant impression nationally and sometimes internationally there was much work to be done in this area. The Queensland Government's 'building local, going global' campaign of the early 1990s seemed to resonate in the IMA.
Late in 1996, Dale Frank temporarily took time off from painting to produce an exhibition entitled Pool, Billiards, and Snooker which transformed the IMA into a bona fide pool parlour and ended with the Inaugural Dale Frank Pool Competition, which incidentally, was won by Craig Walsh. This exhibition reflected a move towards relational aesthetics slightly before Bourriaud's book was released in 1997. In the following year Scott Redford curated an exhibition that also moved the art object beyond the confines of the traditional gallery and into the relational realm by bringing together artists whose work commented on the art scene itself. As Rex Butler said in a publicity statement for this show, 'Why is the art world so cranky, so vexed, so open to dispute? … Why is everything always surrounded by rumours and paranoia? These are the questions Power, Corruption, and Lies attempts to answer.' With work by Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley, Hany Armanious, Malcom Enright, Susan Norrie, and Imants Tillers (to name but a few), this exhibition also included a memorable talk as art-performance by David Craig, who addressed paranoia and conspiracy theories.
In later years, Snelling focussed attention on some of Queensland's artists who have made a major contribution not only to the state but also to the development of a unique Australian cultural practice. While Tracey Moffatt lives in New York, she has maintained her reputation as a local legend and, in 1999, her work was shown at the time of the Asia Pacific Triennial. Her exhibition saw the galleries painted out for Up in the Sky (1997) and Laudanum (1998), while her film and video work was shown on the top floor, which was furnished with deck chairs provided by a defunct outdoor cinema in Nambour. Moffatt attracted some of the largest audiences the IMA has ever seen and, in 2003, she would return as artist-in-residence to research and begin production on her Adventure Series.
In 2001, the new galleries in the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts were opened with an exhibition of work by Robert MacPherson and a handsome publication, 184 Frog Poems, 184 Boss Drovers. Using words and vernacular phrases to create potent and poetic cultural imagery MacPherson has challenged both audiences and institutions, including the IMA, over a long period of time. As Snelling noted in the IMA's newsletter, ' When the Institute of Modern Art officially opened in 1975 it was with Robert MacPherson's exhibition Recent Paintings and since then, there has been a continuous mutual commitment that reaches another level as we open our doors at the new IMA with the same artist.'2
These exhibitions were followed by surveys of work by Madonna Staunton in 2003 and Judy Watson in 2004. Staunton has been working in Brisbane since the 1960s, and, like MacPherson, her innovative works are as fresh today as they were thirty years ago. Music, poetry, and Eastern philosophy have informed Staunton's creative development and are reflected in works of great beauty and delicacy. Looking at country from within, Judy Watson's Sacred Ground Beating Heart was first shown at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth and later adapted for the IMA. It was work that Ted Snell describes in his catalogue essay as being, 'important for Australians, particularly at a time in our history as we move towards reconciling the past and preparing for a shared future built upon understanding and respect. Her works speak eloquently of the suffering of Aboriginal Australians, the massacres, prejudice and disdain, while simultaneously evoking the dignity and achievements of Aboriginal people.'3
Fresh Cut, an annual exhibition for emerging artists, began in 1997 and has continued to gain momentum. The idea arose at a time when graduating students from the visual-arts faculties of Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology hired the IMA for their end-of-year shows. These exhibitions, with up to forty participating artists at any one time, were difficult to install and even more difficult to comprehend. Thus Fresh Cut attempted to respond to and make sense of the work that was being done in Queensland's art schools. Rejecting the idea of a 'best of show', Fresh Cut has remained a curatorial challenge where guest curators attempt to produce a coherent exhibition from disparate new practices. The first Fresh Cut was co-curated by Snelling and myself and included artists such as Daniel Templeman, Di Ball, and Catherine Brown. Always a popular exhibition with audiences in search of the new, Fresh Cut's curators have included Timothy Morrell, Alison Kubler, Ruth McDougall, Chris Handran, Renai Stonley, and most recently Vanessa McRae.
In many ways, the Queensland Art Gallery's inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial (1993) changed Brisbane's psychological geography. Here was an event that a city on the edge of both Asia and the Pacific region could run well and would provide a much-needed focus on city's cultural and geographic positioning. It was during the 1999 APT that Snelling met Dr. Kim Hong Hee, director of Ssamzie Space, and first discussed the 2004 IMA/Ssamzie Space International Residency Exchange, in which artists from Australia and Korea (Craig Walsh, Jay Younger, Wilkins Hill, Choi Soyeon, Choi Dusu, and Sasa) produced exhibitions in Brisbane and Seoul. This most ambitious of IMA projects called to mind Asialink's Fire and Life (1997). Curated by Alison Carroll, Julie Ewington, Suhanya Raffel, Victoria Lynn and Chaitanya Sambrani, Fire and Life spanned five cities in Australia and India, enabling artists from both countries to produce work in an environment where they could also explore each other's way of life. Brisbane-based artist Judith Wright went to Calcutta in 1996 and her Indian 'partner' Jayashree Chakravarty visited Brisbane in March 1997.
This emphasis on the Asian residency continued with artists such as Wang Gong Xin from China, who showed work as part of Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific in 2001. Shortly after, Hema Upadhyay (India) brought close to 2000 hand-made cockroaches to Australia following their appearance in the 2001 Indian Triennale and, in 2005, Chinese multimedia pioneer Zhang Peili was artist in residence courtesy of the Australia China Council showing work with Tracey Moffatt and Shaun Gladwell. It was two touring exhibitions, however, that seemed to both sum up and direct this relatively new interest in contemporary Asian practice. Firstly, Above and Beyond (1996), curated by Snelling and Claire Williamson from the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art Melbourne. This exhibition looked at a new space that had emerged within contemporary practice in Australia over a decade characterised by complex interchanges between Australia and the many cultures of the Asia/Pacific region manifested across governmental, commercial, and cultural spheres. Artists included Simryn Gill, Emil Goh, Joan Grounds, Pat Hoffie, Lindy Lee, Judy Watson, Guan Wei, and Ah Xian. A year later came Rapport—curated by Natalie King, then at Monash University Gallery—an exhibition exploring notions of symmetry and exchange, identity and culture, by placing the work of Australian and Singaporean artists side by side.
Engagement with regional Queensland began with a major exhibition and conference initiated and coordinated by Russell Milledge at the Tanks Art Centre in collaboration with the Cairns Regional Gallery and the IMA (1996). Artists from Indonesia, New Caledonia, the Northern Territory, Thailand, and Far North Queensland were asked to make work that addressed, 'the linkage of communities and the leakage of cultures between them'. In some ways Linkage Leakage repositioned Northern Australia with a view towards the South Asia/Pacific region, with which this part of the country shares much in common. Extraordinary works by Rene Boutin (New Caledonia), Jill Chism (North Queensland), Dadang Christanto (Indonesia), Pamela Lofts (Northern Territory), Navin Rawanchaikul (Thailand), Zane Saunders (North Queensland), and Ken Thaiday Jr (North Queensland) explored aspects of geography and identity in work that was shown first in Cairns and later at the IMA.
Linkage Leakage was generously funded by the Australia Council, however, due to prohibitive costs, the IMA would not have significant contact with North Queensland again until the Gordon Darling Foundation offered a travel grant enabling Exhibitions Coordinator Ruth McDougall and myself to explore facilities in Townsville and Cairns in 2002. It was during this time that a productive relationship with the artist-run initiative, The Upholstery Contemporary Art Group, was initiated. Consisting of Sophie Cadman, Ross Hucks, Deanna Maich, Simon Poole, Charles Street, Samuel Tupou, and Daniel Wallwork, The Upholstery developed a unique style based on idiosyncratic aspects of life in the tropical far north. Their Friday night theme parties/exhibitions had been attracting significant interest and their work developed around these events. In 2004, the IMA and The Upholstery collaborated on The Humid Condition, which was the first phase of the IMA's regional residency program.
The development of a comprehensive residency program was another priority during the mid 1990s and proved to be something of a challenge, given that the IMA's funding at the time did not extend to such activities—the money needed to be sourced elsewhere. In spite of this, a series of residencies kicked off in 1998 and, while the IMA footed the bill for Robyn Backen (Sydney), it was the Brisbane Festival that enabled Fiona Hall (Adelaide) to be resident at the IMA and Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens. Hall spent three weeks carving seeds, fruit, and vegetables from soap for a memorable exhibition called Cash Crop that was shown first at the IMA and later at the gardens. This work generated considerable national interest and is currently in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1999 Richard Grayson, artist, former director of the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide and Artistic Director of the 2002 Biennale of Sydney, spent several weeks in Brisbane creating a dizzying environment that for his exhibition 1000 Accidents.
By 2002, the use of comfortable fully equipped residential apartments in the Judith Wright Centre made lighter work of the accommodation aspect of residencies. 2003, in fact, became known as 'the year of the resident' as seven artists and arts workers flew in from all over the world. Lisa Reihana arrived, courtesy of Creative New Zealand, to show Native Portraits and work with Beata Batorowicz as part of Ruth McDougall's Readymade. This was also the year that American sound artist Ed Osborn returned to Brisbane, thanks to Arts Queensland, to produce an installation and collaborate in musical performances with Elision Ensemble for the Queensland Biennial Festival of Music. Particle Moves also included separate contributions by Brisbane sound practitioners Andrew Kettle and Lowkey+Nude, and an exhibition of video/sound work curated by Lawrence English.
Later in 2003, the Arts Council of England supported a residency with Eric Snell, and Asialink, through the Australia/Indonesia Foundation, provided funds for Indonesian writer and ceramicist, Sujud Dartanto. Mark Loria, who would join the staff in 2005, funded his own internship as part of his Graduate Certificate in Arts and Entertainment Management at Capilano College in Vancouver. Thanks to Brisbane City Council and the Republique Française, Paris-based English artist Lucy Orta was able to spend a week working on an extraordinary collaborative project for young disadvantaged people in the care of Speakout and Brisbane Youth Services. And for three months of 2003, Australian photo-diva Tracey Moffatt flew in from her home in New York City to produce her Adventure Series. Thus the climate was right for the IMA/Ssamzie Space International Residency Exchange with a total of six residencies in Brisbane and Seoul in 2004.
The IMA's public off-site program of the 1990s began with Art for the Bridge, a series of banners that could be seen by traffic coming across the Storey Bridge towards the building in Ann Street. Artists such as Scott Redford, Gordon Bennett, Yenda Carson, and Joyce Watson produced large banners that vied for attention with the enormous advertising billboard on top of the building and always made a significant impression. In 1996 Anne Lord built Rot, a trompe l'oeil paper-maché stone column that would sit on a grass verge opposite the IMA building and decay in the summer storms. This resilient piece, erected in a dry summer, almost out-lived its conceptual and aesthetic purpose until the rains came in late March and Council asked for the battered work to be removed. As the artist intended, the 'monument' had become an eyesore.
The most ambitious of the ephemeral public art projects, however, was Art on Line, which opened in 1997. The brain child of Craig Walsh, this project was supported by the Brisbane City Council, Arterial (then, Street Arts), and Queensland Rail, the latter providing staff, training, publicity and a challenging workplace for artists and installation crew to work in. On the crash wall of Platform One, Brunswick Street Railway Station, three artists—Walsh, Wendy Mills, and Keith Armstrong—produced monumental works that would prove popular with the thousands of commuters who pass through the station every day. To install such work, the railway line was closed and electricity cut from midnight to 8am on a Sunday morning, during which time the previous work was dismantled while a new one was installed. It was necessary to work fast and efficiently in a tough environment that required staff and volunteers to pass the railway's safety course.
Art on Line was an attempt to take the kind of work that was being shown at the IMA and place it in a venue where it could be seen by people who did not usually visit galleries. Craig Walsh's wall of mirrors, The Brunswick Street Collection, Wendy Mills' Fortitude, written with artificial flowers, and Keith Armstrong's Public Relations (On Line + Off Line), which used LED texts and a line map to represent intangible relationships inspired by mass public transportation systems, all changed the way the public would view both the station and contemporary art. Interestingly, as each new work went up for a period of three months, Queensland Rail staff would lament the removal of the previous work. Based on the success of this project, Craig Walsh would later curate and manage Output, a screen-based project in the front window of the Empire Building, soon to be the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporay Arts. Again, with artists like Judith Wright, Merilyn Fairskye, Patricia Piccinini, Jeremy Hynes, and Takehito Koganezawa, this project was greatly appreciated by passers-by on Brunswick Street.
While the work shown at the IMA was often not suitable for children, undaunted, staff determined to build an education program that would increase the interest of secondary school students in contemporary art. Beginning by simply making the IMA accessible to schools, this aspect of the program reached its climax with an exhibition based on Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist's exhibition, Do It. Using instructions from artists such as Felix Gonzales-Torres, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ilya Kabakov, and Fabrice Hybert, groups from eleven schools worked on installations that were shown on the top floor of the Ann Street building. This project, noted for its teamwork, encouraged an interest in contemporary visual arts as well as the development of conceptual skills, while impressing upon students just how difficult it can be to produce a successful installation. Lynette Shannahan, IMA board member and art educator in All Hallows' School's energetic art department, worked to develop an ongoing and productive relationship with schools that resulted in Re: Do It (1999) and our Student Art Membership, where interested students are able to gather at the IMA in the afternoons to meet with artists and discuss their work.
It was fortunate that both Snelling and Arts Queensland were enthusiastic about the development of a publications program that would ultimately provide the IMA with considerable national and international kudos while serving to promote Queensland's cultural product both inside and outside the state. Arts Queensland provided the necessary support for a part-time in-house designer and a modest amount of funding to support the overall program. While the IMA had been printing books for many years, the 'new improved' publications program was expanded to produce not only theoretical texts but also monographs that would be attractive to a wider audience while continuing to interrogate the current concerns of visual arts practice. For a brief period extravagant launches competed with openings as Pope Alice, the IMA's 'Spiritual Leader', officiated over a parade and book signing in the Queensland Art Gallery for Vanitas. One year earlier, Scott Redford's Guy in the Dunes was the excuse for a party in the Pandanus Lounge of Ric's Bar that would never be forgotten, at least not by its speakers, Doug Hall (Director, Queensland Art Gallery), Rob Kelly (IMA Chair), and myself.
In the mid-1990s, two sell-out books of essays were published. Firstly, Edward Colless's book of his own writings Error of My Ways and, secondly, What is Appropriation?: An Anthology of Critical Writings on Australian Art in the '80s and '90s, edited by Dr. Rex Butler and including essays by a comprehensive sample of Australian writers. The first monograph, published in 1997, was Scott Redford's seductive Guy in the Dunes, followed closely by Vanitas, an entertaining and at times outrageous look at the work and world of Luke Roberts. Books would later follow for artists Rodney Spooner, Craig Walsh, Donna Marcus, Andrew Arnautopoulos, Madonna Staunton, Robert MacPherson, and Franz Ehmann, the latter covering Ehmann's activities as an artist and gallerist at Soapbox. Soon after her arrival from Canada, the IMA's General Manager Wendy Mansell set about organising distribution networks in Europe, North America, and New Zealand further enhancing the reputation of the publications program.
At the time of writing this account, July 2005, Shoosh!: A History of the Campfire Group, is closing. This exhibition is accompanied by an ambitious publication and covers Campfire Group's activities from 1988 to the present day, a similar time span to this book. A collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, Campfire is arguably one of the most interesting developments on Queensland's art scene in recent years. Throughout this period members of the Campfire group have participated in a number of exhibitions at the IMA including Balance of Trade Figures (1990), Commitments (1993), Welcome (1995), Good Grief (1997), Wild Kingdom (1997), and Black Humour (1998). If six years seems a long time between drinks, for Campfire their survey was timely. Between IMA exhibitions the collective had been scaling the heights of international fame, if not fortune, and their achievements seem to mirror those of the IMA (albeit in different very ways) both at home and abroad. Like a calendar of events, Campfire's exhibition and its references to certain characteristic periods of visual arts activity provided a oblique view of the past fifteen years through its encounters with a large group of artists and arts organizations.
Being an enduring fixture on the local art scene for thirty years now, the IMA joins organisations like Radio 4 Triple Zed (thirty years), the La Boite Theatre Company (ninety years), Metro Arts (thirty years), and Expressions (twenty years). In good company the IMA, strengthened by funds from the Visual Arts Craft Strategy that resulted from Myer Enquiry recommendations of 2002, is ideally positioned to continue its role as a catalyst for the visual arts and to move with confidence into the 21st century.
1. Sunday Mail 8 August 2004.
2. October–November 2001.
3. 'Country', in Sacred Ground Beating Heart (Perth: John Curtin Gallery,2003.