Art-lovers' haven

By JOSIE MCNAUGHT

Australians wear their "lucky country" label with pride. And anyone running an art institution in Melbourne at present is certainly lucky.

For starters, there's the new Ian Potter Centre, in Federation Square, housing the National Gallery of Victoria's Australian collection (A$100 million), the refurbishment of the 30-year-old NGV building in St Kilda Rd (A$150 million) and Ngargee, a new A$12 million arts project on Melbourne's Southbank arts precinct, which houses the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Chunky Move dance company and Playbox theatre company.

My odyssey through Melbourne's arts projects began with a tour round the A$450 million Federation Square development which links the CBD with the Yarra River.

It gives a new centre of cultural activity for Melbourne, with its central square providing open spaces leading to the river. Federation Square was built on a 3.2ha deck over the existing railway lines, supported by 3000 tonnes of steel beams, 1.4km of concrete "crash walls" and, with the new art gallery in mind, thousands of vibration-absorbing spring coils and rubber pads.

Trundle past on one of the city's trams and you can't miss it. Like a geometric dome on speed, its triangular forms encircle the space in glass, sandstone and zinc, in contrast to the grand Victorian-style buildings that surround it.

The project will house the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, SBS, the public broadcasters' radio and television studios, the Melbourne Visitor Centre, a range of restaurants, cafes, bars, shops, a function centre, cinema, and 6000-sq m of exhibition space within the Ian Potter Centre, otherwise known as NGV: Australia, which opened last week.

As the world's first public art museum devoted to Australian art, it will provide a significant drawcard for visitors.

NGV will house 12 galleries devoted to the permanent collection, four dedicated solely to Aboriginal and Torres Strait works, and eight galleries for temporary exhibitions.

The exhibitions and displays will draw on NGV's collection of 20,000 Australian works.

Director Dr Gerard Vaughan is behind the project, which he describes as one vision, two galleries.

"The new art spaces at Federation Square are in a building in the centre of the city, and the public feed into it at different points," he says. "It's very informal and compact. Compare this to the St Kilda Rd building, which is like a fortress, surrounded by a moat, with a single entrance, which is guarded."

Vaughan says the NGV are renewing themselves with this project and doing things better, particularly when it comes to multi-media. Screens will provide easy access to information on the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, conservation, what's on and building orientation. Sound effects are promised in the fashion and textiles gallery.

Thoughts of Te Papa's annoying voices and commentaries which echo throughout spring to mind, but Vaughan reassures me the core audience has not been forgotten.

"Those people who love the institutions, love the collections, will find their favourite iconic pictures will be back again and they will be connecting again with old friends." Vaughan compares the NGV Australia and International with Sydney's MCA and the Gallery of New South Wales, respectively.

"There will be a lot of cutting-edge Australian contemporary art, with the occasional international intervention to make points about Australian art, where it comes from and its connections.

"All the offices for NGV: Australia will be at the St Kilda Rd building. The new building is more like a wing of St Kilda. The best parallel is the Tate Modern in London. The old Tate is just British art, while Tate Modern is international."

The new Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) would probably argue that if there's any cutting-edge art on show in Melbourne, their striking new space in the Ngargee centre is the place to see it.

You can't miss the building, in Sturt St, South Melbourne. The striking jagged exterior is clad in a special steel product that develops a protective rust coating that stabilises after exposure to the elements. The organic, monolithic exterior belies the expansive galleries inside, but doesn't compete with it.

Inside, art will be the star, not architecture.

Director Juliana Engberg promises a contemporary art space that is "sophisticated, sufficiently scaled and full of artistic and intellectual scope."

The Ngargee opened its doors in October with two shows, A History of Happiness and Undertow, a new commission by Australian artist Susan Norrie.

A History of Happiness features more than 80 works, including pieces by Nan Goldin, Yoko Ono, Robert Mapplethorpe and Barbara Kruger. The show takes its lead from one of Kruger's works which challenges "Your pleasure is short lived and spasmodic."

Engberg is delighted at being handed this purpose-made building and has a cracking programme in place.

This month has been devoted to Patricia Piccinini, with the first major survey of this Melbourne artist's animated sculptures and video interactives. Next year, Engberg will exhibit work by Australians, including David Rozetsky, Louise Weaver, Daniel von Sturmer, Emily Floyd and Greg Creek. International artists appearing at ACCA will include Scot Douglas Gordon and American Bruce Nauman.

From May to July, ACCA will introduce NEW, a programme for emerging Australian artists given free rein to take the next major step in their artistic development.

Contemporary art will beat loud and strong from this new heart of Melbourne's Southbank arts precinct. It will provide the perfect foil to the NGV: International's more traditional gallery experience when it opens next October.

And until it opens, there is always the chance of an art show at the Melbourne Museum (the blockbuster Three Centuries of Italian Art has just ended), the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, the State Library of Victoria, which has just run a fascinating exhibition on the doomed expedition of explorers Burke and Wills, and then there's the dealer galleries to explore ...

The lucky country? Spoiled rotten, more like.

* Josie McNaught travelled to Melbourne with the support of Tourism Victoria.

* The Ian Potter Centre, NGV: Australia, Federation Square; NGV: International, opening October 2003, St Kilda Rd; ACCA, 111 Sturt St, Southbank.