the artist–run initiative, Bitumen River Gallery
From 1981 and throughout the 1980s, perched at the edge of an asphalt carpark in Canberra’s inner-southern suburb of Manuka, stood a smallish building which was the primary exhibition space of the artist run initiative, Bitumen River Gallery. The importance of Bitumen River Gallery as an artist run initiative in the Canberra region is considerable. The program encompassed gallery exhibitions as well as environmental and public art projects, and it played a vital role in the presentation of contemporary art in Canberra in the 1980s. Key artists and curators involved in the project included eX de Medici, Tony Ayres, Stephanie Radok, Erica Green, Neil Roberts, and Anne Virgo. Anne Virgo became the first director of the Canberra Contemporary Art Space which evolved directly out of Bitumen River following a merger with the Arts Council. The resulting arts centre was established at Gorman House in former police barracks adjacent to Canberra’s central shopping district.
Bitumen River occupies a legendary status in the region, and was a precursor of other independent artist run projects that surfaced in the late 1980s and early 1990s in and around Canberra. Galerie Constantinople at Queanbeyan (just over the Australian Capital Territory’s eastern border) was set up by eX de Medici and Neil Roberts in the late 1980s. In 1993 Spiral Arm Gallery was launched in the inner-southern suburb of Kingston in the Leichhardt Street Studios building, adjacent to the Studio One print workshop, and above Helen Maxwell’s aGOG space. In 1991 the Australian National Capital Artists studios were established at the light-industrial suburb of Mitchell, with more studios and a gallery space opening the following year near the culturally diverse shopping and eating district of Dickson... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline