Take a walk through Victoria's Warrnambool Art Gallery with Director Murray Bowes as he discusses some highlights of the Warrnambool Art Gallery collection, the formation of the gallery and its connection with the surrounding communities.

Further Information

TRANSCRIPT

-Where it all began for the Warrnambool Art Gallery was in 1886, when the city fathers went shopping at the great centennial exhibition in Melbourne and, with the support National Gallery in Victoria, bought a suite of 16 works-- European salon paintings, German and French, which were very much the flavor of the time. And those 16 works formed the nucleus of what became the Warrnambool Art Gallery collection. To complement the European works in the collection, we also have a strong colonial Australian collection.

One of the key works is Eugene von Guerard's view of Tower Hill. It's an iconic landmark on the outskirts of Warrnambool, and he painted that on his travels through this area in 1855. It's a very exciting opportunity for the gallery at the moment to secure Sky Divisions Gathering, a significant landscape by Australian surrealist James Gleeson. It's been on loan for a number of years, and our community has really bonded with the work and would like to make sure it stays here.

We also have contemporary works which shows stories about this place. And we're fortunate to have a painting by Glenn Morgan, a local artist, depicting the funeral of Banjo Clark, a local elder from Framlingham community just outside Warrnambool. And it's lovely testament to the man and his place in the community, and it's a privilege for the gallery to be able to show images to tell those stories about this place. So all the galleries in the regional network differ in what they collect. Warrnambool, we specialize in colonial Australian painting, contemporary Australian print making, some work of the Melbourne modernists, the 1930s to '50s, and works both historical and contemporary about the Warrnambool region.

In addition to the permanent collection, the Warrnambool Art Gallery has three temporary exhibition spaces. George Lance Gallery is used for innovative projects, less traditional kind of work. The main temporary exhibition gallery is an opportunity for us to bring in major touring exhibitions for our local audience. And the Alan Lame Community Gallery is a space that's utilized by school students, emerging artists, and local practitioners in that space.

Visitors to the gallery, I think they'll experience a broad cross section of Australian visual art history. We're able to collect things that are meaningful to this community, and to tell visitors about Warrnambool and the people that make artwork here.