Melbourne’s New Arts Infrastructure
Currently Melbourne is buzzing with a renewed interest in all things cultural. Since October 2002, the city has come alive with the opening of the new Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), as well as Federation Square where both the The Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria (NGVA-housing the Australian collection) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) are located. The Flinders Lane strip where a number of Melbourne's leading commercial galleries are·situated, is flourishing with the increased influx of visitors to the city, all keen to look at and experience visual art. Overall Melbourne is developing its image as a city that calls for a high level of seriousness from all who are interested in not just art but culture in general.
Interestingly, Melbourne has talked about having a civic square for a long time now - actually, as early as 1926 when in The Age we find an article titled: 'A Vision of Greater Melbourne'.1 In July 1997 Lab architecture studio in association with Bates Smart architects won the design competition for the Federation Square project, a proposal that entailed the demolition of Melbourne's Gas and Fuel Towers, as well as the construction of a deck, across the railway, which includes 4,000 vibration-absorbing spring coils and rubber pads. Originally, the area now given over to the Square was settled by the Wathaurung, Bunurong, and Woiworung Aboriginal groups. Working with this history of Aboriginal settlement and the subsequent struggles that ensued as colonisers occupied the area, Paul Carter has developed a public artwork titled nearamnew. Carter's richly layered surface of cross-hatched Kimberley sandstone with textual markings stretches over the site.
On 25 October 2002... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline