History

John Buckley / 1976-9

When I arrived to take up the position of Director of the IMA in June 1976 I had not long returned from a period of about seven years in Canada. In the last years of this period abroad I had become substantially involved in the life of the art community, as it then was, in North America and had travelled to the U.K. and Europe. It was a time of ferment. Younger artists everywhere were abandoning the making of art 'objects', beginning to question the marketing of art as a collectible commodity and looking for ways in which they could shape it into a political and social tool.

The search by artists for alternatives was, of course, part of the restless questioning of the status quo which dominated the late 1960s and early 1970s. Artists formed loose collectives and established systems in which conceptual concerns could be communicated and shared – video, performance, postal networks like Image Bank, small press publications like File Magazine and Parachute were some of them.

Government arts funding bodies were receptive to the need being expressed by artists for public and non-commercial spaces to be set up in which the new conceptual work could be shown. In Canada, the 'parallel' gallery system – a series of small government-funded, non-commercial spaces – one per province, was the result. It was an exciting time to be there and when I made the decision in 1974 to return to Australia I suppose I must have been further excited at the prospect of returning just at a time when similar things were being thought about here.

I found the Australia Council just in the process of setting up and attempting to address the issue of alternative contemporary art spaces. Melbourne was already off and running with the Ewing and George Paton Gallery under the fervent and energetic directorship of Kiffy Rubbo. Noel Sheridan and Donald Brook were guiding the Experimental Art Foundation into existence in Adelaide.

Arriving in Brisbane I felt in some ways as though I had undergone time-travel back into the past. It was a city which, in terms of the fine arts, was still stranded in the late 50s. At this time there was no vigorous local debate about the contemporary art issues of l he day as there would have been in, say, Melbourne or Sydney because, with one exception, (Robert MacPherson was producing some of his most important work) there were no practitioners of recent art concerns working in Brisbane.

The idea of an IMA had a number of strong things going for it – among them, a group of enthusiastic individuals, in particular, Betty and Roy Churcher, who had long expressed a dissatisfaction for the kind of exhibition programme which was being offered by the Queensland Art Gallery – at that stage occupying temporary premises and maintaining a holding operation until Queensland's new Cultural Centre could be realized.

The idea of an independent contemporary art space in Brisbane was one which coincided happily with current Australia Council policy and, with Federal encouragement and support, it became possible to arrange a marriage with the State government arts funding body to finance the new space.

The IMA first opened in a simple two-storey building in Market Street which housed two pleasantly proportioned exhibition spaces and a tiny kitchen. There was a very damp basement with an earthen floor in which nothing could be stored other than crates – for short periods of time – and the dozen or so plastic chairs which were hauled up and down the stairs each time a lecture or meeting required them. No office – a desk and a filing cabinet downstairs where a secretary/assistant worked – a table upstairs for the Director – thus both spaces were overseen, which was all the security we had.

Work was not easy when the exhibition spaces were crowded. People, as they got to know you, invariably wanted to chat. Difficult as this situation was, it did have one advantage. By being so accessible, it was possible to get to know people quickly and to impart a good deal of information about both the policy of the IMA and its future objectives and also to talk about whichever exhibition might be on at the time.

Financially, the greatest difficulty was always to fund the programme itself, for government grants covered little more than the annual rent, salaries and basic overheads. There was nothing for capital improvements or basic equipment. Fund raising was always painful and time consuming for a number of faithful supporters and, ultimately, minimal in terms of return for effort.

In those first years I felt that the job of the director was rather akin to that of a street busker. The trick was to keep one eye always on the begging bowl whilst at the same time executing a performance which might seduce at least some members of an audience – which largely had its mind on other things – into paying momentary attention.

The two organisations from which it was possible to seek additional money for the programme itself were the recently formed Australian Gallery Directors' Council and the British Council. The AGDC was formed to assist, both administratively and financially, with touring exhibitions both within Australia and overseas. Special funds were available to 'smaller' galleries to encourage the curating of exhibitions which could tour within such galleries. I chose to take full advantage of the scheme. The benefits were reciprocal. Put in the curatorial work to generate exhibitions which were worthy of touring and they would largely be AGDC funded. In turn, the IMA could apply to receive such exhibitions which had been initiated by other 'smaller' galleries which might be suitable for the IMA's programme. A good many exhibitions during those first three years were made possible in this way. The British Council, too, was another valuable source of funding during this period. Its aim was to promote contemporary British art overseas and, again, providing the Australian gallery concerned was prepared to put in the curatorial work – money was available to assist in either bringing younger British artists or their work to this country.

The IMA's initial exhibition programme was funded largely in this way and, looking back on the wide variety of contemporary art it was able to present to a Brisbane audience during those first years, it does not now seem an insignificant contribution.

Initially then, apart from the faithful few, the audience was small and I saw one of my principal jobs to increase it. I felt unequivocally that the role of the IMA in those initial years of its existence was to create a balanced programme of exhibitions and events which would, firstly, establish its presence both in Brisbane and in Australia generally, and then, ultimately, draw in an audience which would give it local support. A balance between representative exhibitions of new, young art which would introduce to Brisbane for the first time the concerns of experimental contemporary art in the mid 1970s both here and overseas – for I also believed that it was important for the programme at the IMA to be international rather than national, if that were at all possible – and a strong series of exhibitions by known, established artists whose work had achieved importance during the 70s but, as yet, had not been seen in Queensland.

The international programme included visits and exhibitions of work by John Danvers, Michael Craig Martin, Tim Head, Derek Boshier and Charles Garrad, all from the UK; exhibitions of photographs by David Hockney, Diane Arbus, Robert Cumming and Lee Friedlander and visits by the two last named artists; visits, exhibitions or specially created works by Carl Andre, Jurgen Klauke, Mario Merz, Linda Benglis, James Rosenquist, and a sizeable retrospective look at the work of William T Wiley. In collaboration with the Queensland Art Gallery, IMA assisted in the hosting of several large scale exhibitions such as Illusion And Reality and Contemporary Canadian Painting; it also represented the Australian alternative galleries at an international conference and exhibition about contemporary art spaces in Bologna.

From interstate there were visits and exhibitions, installation works or performances from Michael Johnson, Rosalie Gascoigne, Robert Hunter, John Nixon, Richard Dunn, lan Hamilton, Noel Sheridan and other artists from the Experimental Art Foundation; an elaborate collage work executed in Brisbane under instruction, from material gathered by Bruce Latimer in New York; an alternative look at contemporary Australian drawing curated by Dom de Clario and a show of work by Pinacotheca artists.

Exhibitions of work by local artists were not easy as there was little activity on the contemporary front which was suitable for the IMAs programme. There were, however, several important installations during the first three years, of work by Robert MacPherson and exhibitions by Madonna Staunton, Anne Thomson, Paul Sellwood, Glenn O'Malley, Nick Mourtzakis, and a group of three Queensland naive artists. In my last year, IMA managed a series of outdoor pieces called Performances From The Crypt in which a number of local art students conducted their first tentative experiments in that medium.

Finally, there were a number of important retrospective exhibitions by established artists: Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Fred Williams and Roger Kemp (the last in conjunction with the St John's Cathedral) which gave Brisbane audiences a first look at substantial bodies of work by each of these artists.

One regret I nursed during the whole of those first three years was that the educational/informational ingredient was so minimal as to be almost non-existent. There was, of course, no money for properly researched, printed catalogues and only rarely was it possible to pay an interstate artist a fare and a fee to talk about his or her work.

Nevertheless, the IMA somehow managed a fairly busy programme of lectures, largely through the generosity of the artists who were exhibiting there. But in those first years they were mostly sparsely attended – unless, of course, it was Patrick McCaughey talking about Fred Williams – for which we had to hire a local hall to hold the hundreds who attended!

In my last year, I persuaded the local art college to allow me to give a once-a-week lecture, which I called 'Art and Ideas', to the final year Fine Art students. By this means discussion was opened up on contemporary art issues to which the students did not at that time have access. In time, those students began to come to the IMA of their own accord and to take an interest in what was happening there.

Towards the end of my period, I began to sense that the IMA was at last accepted as having an important role to play in the art life of Brisbane. The audience was quite healthy and growing rapidly and the most difficult job of breaking new ground was over. The IMA could now, I felt, move into its next phase – whereby it could begin to take a tougher stance – both in terms of its exhibition programme and the issues it might address. Personally, it was time for me to return to Melbourne. For the IMA it was time for renewed energy, fresh ideas – a new director. And it seemed to me that John Nixon was an ideal choice for that job.