The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
The Institute of Modern Art, now into its second decade of operation, is one of several public contemporary art spaces around Australia (in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Hobert, Perth), which are currently coming to terms with the ways in which their individual histories and local contexts will chart their direction in the future. The Institute of Modern Art, as I see it has a strong and significant history as a gallery which, as its charter states, seeks to ‘promote research and experimentation in art’.
The IMA's avant garde and conceptual tradition has given it a particular identity and profile both within Brisbane and interstate, which has been enhanced by the recently high standard of publications it has produced. At the same time, under the gallery's various directors a diverse range of artists and points of view have found a place within the exhibition program.
Of all the IMA's stated aims and objectives, to ‘promote research and experimentation’, is perhaps the most significant because it provides an effective rationale for the three main areas of the gallery's activity: its curatorial, educational and publications programs. If the IMA succeeds in adequately fulfilling its charter, all three areas succeed in provoking an Informed and lively debate about contemporary art issues and a critical context for local art developments. It is my Intention to develop further the IMA's program by Initiating a series of exhibitions accompanied by publications examining particular Issues within the disourse of postmodernism.
Part of a growing sense of a future for contemporary art galleries is the realisation that the art of the present, though it is in a constant state of flux, does have a past and a particular history which... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline