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Regional players reap the rewards of touring
By Tricia Fitzgerald
In the past, national touring exhibitions have been mainly the domain of large national and state galleries and museums.
Smaller regional galleries and organisations have found it difficult to mount national tours. With fewer staff and resources, they often can't afford the time or cost of putting together an Australia-wide show.
That situation is changing though, and it's a change backed by the Visions of Australia program.
Visions is encouraging regional galleries and museums to tour exhibitions around the country, not just in their own states.
In the program's latest round of funding, almost half the successful grant recipients were regionally based galleries and organisations.
So what's in it for the smaller players? Why would an under-resourced and over-stretched regional gallery, for example, want to take on the extra cost and work of putting together a national tour?
The Bendigo Art Gallery has received several Visions development and touring grants, and Director, Karen Quinlan, says the rewards of national touring outweigh the demands.
The gallery has toured its own collection of 19th century narrative art and is now developing the Town and Country: Portraits of Colonial Homes & Gardens travelling exhibition.
'Things are changing at Bendigo Gallery; we're getting a bit more adventurous with tours and are exposing ourselves to wider audiences who wouldn't normally see our work,' Quinlan said.
'We want to tour work in Western Australia and South Australia not just Victoria, for example.
'It does stretch our resources and we normally just break even financially but we enjoy getting our name out there, being seen as a gallery that's contributing to the regional exhibition circuit, that has the ability to do national tours, just being a player.'
The Cairns Regional Gallery has been using tours to highlight the artistic wealth of its region nationally and internationally.
The gallery's Escape Artists exhibition took the work of artists who have lived or worked in the tropical north out to the rest of Australia.
In 2001 the gallery toured a groundbreaking exhibition Ilan Pasin-this is our way, a collection of traditional and contemporary cultural material from the Torres Strait Islands.
Gallery Director Louise Doyle said the touring exhibitions attract people to the rich environment of Northern Queensland.
'They see the work and want to come and experience the country,' she said.
'We're contributing exhibition product to public galleries across Australia and bringing out wonderful works from public and private collections that are rarely viewed by a broad audience.'
Next year the gallery will tour Encounters with Country: The Landscapes of Ray Crooke, which showcases the artist's landscape paintings of Cape York's remote gulf country and scenes from Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.
Doyle said the research and documentation that the Visions program funds to prepare tours, adds value to the gallery's collections and the region's cultural heritage.
'It's about professional development, enhancing our archives and records and, in the case of Ray Crooke for example, that work will be there for future generations.'
The Visions program is also encouraging large and small galleries and museums to work collaboratively to develop exhibition and touring expertise. The idea is for more established museums and galleries to mentor less experienced players.
The Dark Woods: An Exhibition of Australian Comics, which is currently touring is a good example. It's an exhibition of alternative comic work by young Australian artists, exploring issues like identity, family break down, looking for work and suicide.
A cutting edge collection, it was put together by two young cartoon artists Sarah Howell and Leigh Rigozzi with support from the Hobart City Council's Carnegie Gallery and Contemporary Art Services Tasmania (CAST).
Carnegie Gallery's Mary Knights and CAST's Director Michael Edwards guided Howell and Rigozzi through the development of the exhibition, the designing of the catalogue, installation, and organisation of public workshops.
'It was a pretty exciting team effort for CAST and Carnegie Gallery-it didn't feel like a one way effort,' Knights said.
'The young curators were very generous with their knowledge of the zines and comic culture artform that is often marginalised by galleries and we were able to assist them with the professional aspects of how to mount a national tour.'
'A pay off for us is that the exhibition has been attracting large audiences of young people who wouldn't normally have come to the gallery.'
Town and Country: Portraits of Colonial Homes & Gardens opens in Bendigo in March and plans to tour Newcastle, Sydney, Gippsland, Geelong and Launceston in 2005. Encounters with Country: the Landscapes of Ray Crooke will be in Cairns in September 2005 and will then tour nationally. The Dark Woods exhibition tours Millicent, Burnie and Ipswich in 2005 and will be in Grafton in early 2006.
Visions of Australia development and tour funding is open to cultural organisations such as museums, galleries, libraries, scientific organisations, historical societies and Indigenous and ethnic community groups. The next round of Visions funding closes on 1 April 2005 and information is available at www.dcita.gov.au/visions
All pics: Undergrowth (detail), Mandy Ord 2004
The Dark Woods Catalogue. Courtesy: CAST Gallery, Hobart.