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The First Decade: Lighting the Candles
This year marks the tenth birthday of the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in Townsville. Whilst Regionalism attracts considerable attention in the press, the same cannot be said for regional galleries, particularly those in Queensland. North Queensland, about as far away from the "centre" as one can go, is, however, perhaps one of the more typical places in which to study the development of regional art practice, partly because of its distance (some 2500 kilometres north of Sydney) and hardly closer to Brisbane, (1400 kilometres), but also because it is different: different in climate and geography, resulting in a difference in culture and lifestyle. The cumulative effect of difference and distance seems to have caused an almost rebellious determination in the arts community to "go it alone", to engage in critical debate inter pares, to interact with the other arts and artists in the region, such as musicians, dancers, actors, and writers. Art practice in Townsville, to some extent, has become autochthonic, in the true sense of the word.
Yet many of the artists practising here have a growing national reputation , which confirms Sylvia Kleinert's point that regional sites need not be "necessarily conceived as being in opposilion to the city ".1 The main institutional manifestations of the visual arts are the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery and the School of Art and Design at James Cook University. In addition to this there are several alternative art spaces, numerous commercial galleries, Dance North-a profess ional company which tours internationally, semi-professional and professional theatre companies, a newly established music department and the Post-Graduate Arts Fusion Centre at James Cook University, all of which contribute to the... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline