Excessory opens at Rockhampton Art Gallery

 

I have just returned from a short journey to Rockhampton Art Gallery in Central Queensland to assist with the installation of our touring exhibition, Excessory: Contemporary Australian Jewellery. Shane Fitzgerald (Exhibitions and Collections Officer at Rockahmpton) and I spent a day in the gallery preparing the exhibition for presentation which included planning and preparing the appropriate exhibition space, unpacking and condition reporting all of the individual works, and arranging the incredibly delicate jewellery pieces for display.

Excessory brings together the work of six contemporary artists – Jeanette James, Emily Valentine, Rebecca Ward, Zoe Jay Veness, Mark Vaarwerk and Vernon Bowden – who challenge traditional notions of value associated with jewellery by transforming everyday and found materials into precious objects. I am pleased to report that the installation went smoothly and Excessory is now open and showing at Rockhampton Art Gallery until 20 February 2011.

For more information on this and other touring exhibitions visit www.mgnsw.org.au/exhibit/now_touring/

You can view online videos featuring artist interviews from Excessory at M&G NSW’s YouTube channel

I was also fortunate enough to catch the Ergon Energy CQ Art Award that just opened last week; a $10,000 acquisitive biennial art award that selects a different form of artistic practice to celebrate each time. This year, the nominated genre is ceramics and both exhibition rooms on the ground floor of the gallery are filled with beautiful and diverse ceramic artworks, from fluid sculptural forms to installation pieces and even some items that have incorporated lighting effects. The Ergon Award will be on display at Rockhampton Art Gallery until the end of February 2011.  

Lillian

A greeting from new CEO Michael Rolfe

I missed last weeks Alert! and very much want to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new CEO of M&G NSW. As many of you know, my background features a 22 year involvement as director of 3 regional galleries, in regional NSW and metropolitan Sydney.  The challenges in running an organisation like M&G NSW are not unlike the demands encountered day to day in many galleries and museums around the state.

Just as exhibition programs and related activities are designed and intended to embrace, test and reflect the makeup of diverse communities, so to M&G has the challenge to connect. We aim to devise programs and activities that operate strategically, but also bond locally, in support of the sector in its different guises.

Soon we will be participating in the development of a strategic framework for future development of the museum and gallery sector in NSW.  With support provided by Arts NSW a consultant will be engaged to describe, guide and plan the way forward. Opportunities for sector representation in this process will be highlighted in future Alert!s, so stay tuned.

Last week I attended the Regional Services Stakeholders Day organised by and held at the Powerhouse Museum. Dawn Casey and her team are responsible for crafting an extraordinary regional support program. By reaching out and connecting with a broad representation of the sector their commitment and professional approach was inspiring to both listen to and be part of. Recently I also had the good fortune to meet many of the State’s RADO officers at a function organized by Regional Arts NSW. Under Elizabeth Rogers, RANSW has shown real leadership in what can and should be done to support regional and remote communities’ participation in cultural programs. Both these opportunities reinforced for me the collegiate necessities of what we do.

Of course M&G NSW also connects widely and over the next few years, as we grow and craft a second phase of development, I hope that our profile becomes one that clearly recognises and supports the distinct components within the sector. Museums and galleries are different and the level of support required amongst them is also quite diverse. I look forward to working with you all and insist that you don’t hesitate to get in touch should the need arise.

Michael Rolfe 

CEO M&G NSW

Cuil Lodair Culloden Battlesite

On my way north this week I visited the Culloden Battlesite. The site is located just out of Inverness on a windswept, boggy moor. The battle took place on 16 April 1746 and was the last major pitched battle fought on British soil. Bonnie Prince Charlie led the Jacobite forces against British government troops in the final battle of an uprising that had begun the previous year. Having marched all night in cold, wet conditions, the Jacobites were not in the best of conditions by the time the battle began at 12pm, tragically in under an hour over 1500 Jacobites and 50 government troops had been killed and the battle ended.

The site has been sensitively interpreted with a new visitor centre and exhibition opened in December 2007. The centre has a low profile using local stone and timber that allows it to blend in with the surrounding landscape. The centre houses a shop, cafe and exhibition that skillfully weaves the story of both the Jacobite and government sides of the battle and contextualises events with a broader international political landscape. As with much of the Highlands area of Scotland much of the signage and interpretation is bilingual Gaelic/English. The move to provide more prominence for Gaelic throughout the Highlands is supported through schools, cultural groups and some television programs. No doubt the bilingual labels seen here and in many other museums and galleries in the Highlands supports these moves.

The exhibition incorporates audiovisual components including the thoughts of those who took part in the battle retold by actors in Gaelic and English, table top projected moving maps of the events leading up to the battle and the battle itself and a 360 degree full height film of a re-enactment of the battle. Archaeological material from the battlefield is on display and well as contemporary documents artwork and maps and a range of weaponry including guns, swords, cannon and targe (a leather studded shield).

A fantastic handheld multimedia interpretative device triggered by GPS produced by ZolkC is provided as part of the entry fee and provides an enriched experience for visitors walking through the outside site. As well as tours in English, Gaelic and various other languages, the tour also provides a child centered tour and audio description for those with vision impairment.

Glasgow Museums

Earlier this week I caught the train over to Glasgow and catch up with a few museums. To an outsider, the Scottish train system appears far more efficient than what we experience in Australia. Having a much more concentrated population probably helps with this. Edinburgh and Glasgow are only about an hour apart by train and there’s a train between the two departing every 15 minutes, stopping at several key towns in between.

I was met at Glasgow Central station by Chris Jamieson from Glasgow Museums who took me out to Nitshill where Glasgow Resource Centre is located. Although a much larger complex, it reminded me very much of Mitchell in Canberra, where the National Museum, Australian War Memorial and National Archives all have their main stores. This was particularly the case when the train back to town was delayed by 40 minutes due to weather and I was standing there with a number of staff from the Museum huddling together in an attempt to stay warm!

Glasgow Museums are part of Glasgow Life, a Trust set up to manage the recreational facilities of Glasgow Council. The Glasgow Local government area covers 175 km2 and 580,000 people (1.2 million in the greater Glasgow urban area). Glasgow Museums include 8 museums, the resource centre and the open museum program. The Glasgow Museums Resource Centre was built in two stages, the first housing much of the art collections from Kelvingrove and the second taking an incredibly diverse collection from the storage area of the Transport museums (currently being redeveloped at the Riverside Museum). As well as transport and industrial material, the collection includes design, ethnographic, natural science, archaeological, social history and ancient history materials. It’s estimated that there are something close to 1 million objects in the collection and approximately 400 staff across all the Glasgow Museums sites. The storage facility id divided into a series of pods each one housing collections of like materials. The pods are housed within an overall warehouse as buildings within buildings. This system provides an additional buffer between the collection and the outside environment, somewhat like the air pocket within double glazed windows.

The Resource Centre is open for tours which are run regularly either as general interest (highlights) or focused on a particular theme. The curators within Glasgow Museums are being encouraged to develop tours based on topics of interest to them. I was told about one recent tour focused on Shakespeare which highlighted paintings taken from Shakespearean plays, collection items from the Elizabethan era (of Shakespeare's time) and material related to the topics of the plays currently on the school curriculum. Another tour focuses on taxidermy and gives visitors the chance to see the taxidermy areas of the collection. Tours for preschoolers have been developed with one tour that focused on the beach including children lying on beach towels in the store imagining they were at the beach.As well as housing Glasgow Museums collections, the facility provides office facilities for many of the Glasgow Museums staff, conservation labs, exhibition design and production workshops and a learning area.

The Resource Centre is also the home base for the Glasgow Open Museum, a project led by Chris Jamieson. The project aims to bring the museum out to people in Glasgow and uses the collection as a focus. Over a 20 year period the Glasgow Open Museum has worked with people in various parts of Glasgow including setting up within a flat in a tall Housing Commission style block of flats. This provided an opportunity to work with migrant women on a project that started by taking them to look at the Glasgow Collections and selecting objects of interest to them to develop their own art work. The Open Museum collaborates with other groups throughout Glasgow including a foundation that works with refugees who have been victims of torture, a Pakistani community centre providing day services for elderly people, the storytelling networks, and a youth group in a housing trust area.

The Glasgow Open Museum provides small travelling exhibitions to libraries, health centres and shopping centres and has permanent displays in a children's centre, a mosque, and two mini community museums. They also have a loan service where groups can borrow resources including free standing exhibitions, handling kits, Reminiscence kits and tabletop displays.

The Gardener's Ark is the outcome of a two year project with a residential group from Leverndale Hospital and is an active rehabilitation project. The Open Museum worked with hospital residents, staff and community workers to develop independent living skills with a group of adult learners. The group were interested in gardening and visited to museum to look at artworks including still life paintings. They then created their own still life settings using vegetables they had grown and objects from the collection which were then photographed by the museum photographer who assisted with settings and lighting. The learners were then interested in a painting of a herring boat from the collection, which led to the construction of a boat filled with pots of flowers. The boat has been on display at different sites around Glasgow including Leverndale Hospital, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, the People's Palace Winter Gardens and the Hidden Gardens at Tramways. It is to have a permanent home in the grounds of Leverndale Hospital from this November.

ANCODS - Back in Australia

ANCODS - the Agreement between Netherlands and Australia Concerning Old Dutch Shipwrecks  - originally had the artifacts found and recovered from the four Dutch East India Company (VOP) ships (inc the BATAVIA) lost off the coast of WA split evenly between the Netherlands and Australia. In 2006 , on the 400yr anniversary of the first connection between our countries, the Netherlands government announce that it would give its share of the treasure to Australia.

A plate recover from The Batavia

This extraordinary gift was handed over in a simple ceremony at the National Maritime Museum tonight.





One of the crates was opened and displayed giving the guest an extraordinary experience to get up close an personal to object from the 17th century.

These simple everyday objects are in remarkable condition and each has an extraordinary story to tell.






The collection will be in the custodianship of the Western Australian Museum in keeping with the practice of keeping object near where they were excavated.

One of the more interesting objects were chain shots. They are basically two shot balls joined together with a spring.  Fired from a musket  they were a lethal and terrifying weapon as the spring stretched out and the balls traveled towards their target.At the time they would have been state of the art weaponry!

posted by Michael Huxley

Summerlee, Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Last week I met with Clare Weir and Lu McNair from Summerlee, Museum of Scottish Industrial Life. Summerlee is an industrial museum focusing on coal mining and ironworks based in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Museum is another recognised collection and highlights the success of the recognition scheme in supporting the further development of collections across Scotland.

Summerlee opened as an ironworks and associated mine in 1836. Whilst the furnaces of the ironworks ceased operation in the 1920s, the site continued as an industrial operation until the 1980s at which time it was operating as the Hydrocon Crane company. The initial museum opened on the site in 1987 as a Trust or volunteer managed operation. The museum is located on a 22 acre site with a heritage tram delivering people around the site.

Today the site is operated by North Lanarkshire council and has been recently redeveloped following an investment of GBP 10 from a range of sources including the Heritage Lottery Fund, Museums Galleries Scotland, the European Regional Development Fund, North Lanarkshire Council, charitable Trusts and individuals. The site provides wonderful opportunities for engagement through interactives such as the mock up blast furnace that leads to a pig iron casting.

There has been a conscious effort to incorporate social history onto the site alongside the large technological pieces. This was reinforced by the local community who were closely involved in the redevelopment. Older people within the community wanted to be able to take grandchildren and show them something of the way they lived, hence the addition of areas focusing on dances, banners from marches and the local movie theatre.

The museum also contains a series of row houses set up to reflect changing lifestyles of the area. The first three houses depict the nineteenth and early twentieth century, where families rented one roomed attached homes in rows. The 1940s and 1960s homes showed a continued accumulation of belongings and the extension of the homes into the backyard and roof. The museum has also developed backyards for some of the cottages, showing the changing use of gardens from a source of food to a place of leisure, over time.

With the changing economic climate, the museum is looking at how they will operate in the future. They may have less funds to develop new exhibitions but are hoping that this will provide more time for continued involvement of the community in the development of their exhibitions. They are exploring ways of expanding opportunities for volunteers, including guiding through the museum. There has been a program of involving long term unemployed people in placements at the museum which may also expand over time, perhaps leading to traineeships or apprenticeships.