Great Collections - The Ultimate Pool Room
The classic Australian film The Castle makes no small reference to the importance of placing prized family possessions in the “Pool Room”. However much as a nation we joke about what we’ll put in the Pool Room, the fact of the matter remains that this stuff is actually important to us. These objects may have little meaning to one family but mean a great deal to the family who own them.
If you think about the State of NSW as a family home, Great Collections, an exhibition coming to the Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC) next week, is like all the stuff you’d put in the Pool Room – and as NSW residents we own them all.
Drawn from the magnificent collections of New South Wales’ eight premier cultural institutions, these significant items are representative of Australia’s vibrant history. They shape our psyche, record our development, provide insight into our national spirit and inspire us for the future.
The Art Gallery of NSW, Australian Museum, Botanic Gardens Trust, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Museum of Contemporary Art, Powerhouse Museum, State Library of NSW and State Records NSW have embraced this ground-breaking exhibition’s innovative vision and made cultural material from their extensive collections available for inclusion.
This landmark exhibition brings iconic treasures together for the very first time and showcases them to metropolitan, regional and interstate audiences. If you have been to Dubbo Regional Gallery – The Armati Bequest before, you will know that the huge space is divided into a number of smaller galleries. This exhibition, however, is so big it takes up the entire exhibition space, and as such is the largest exhibition ever shown in the Dubbo region.
There is a Picasso, a Durer, as well as colonial furniture, Jurassic fossils, and a Banksia collected by Joseph Banks himself (wow!) and other natural history objects to name but a few of the 100 + items that will be on display.
Yet to have this exhibition alongside the collection of the Museum’s permanent display is significant in its own right. Whilst we as residents of NSW can take pride in what our State has collected for generations, and continue to do so into the future, we can as a local community take great pride in what our own city has gathered throughout its history. Our objects may not have the big International names that the larger State institutions have, but it doesn’t mean our Pool Room is any less significant, it just tells a more intimate story of us – and there isn’t a set of joisting sticks in sight!
This fantastic exhibition opens on Saturday April 4 and runs until May 10 – in the mean time there is always People, Places, Possessions: Dubbo Stories on show at the Museum.
If you think about the State of NSW as a family home, Great Collections, an exhibition coming to the Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC) next week, is like all the stuff you’d put in the Pool Room – and as NSW residents we own them all.
Drawn from the magnificent collections of New South Wales’ eight premier cultural institutions, these significant items are representative of Australia’s vibrant history. They shape our psyche, record our development, provide insight into our national spirit and inspire us for the future.
The Art Gallery of NSW, Australian Museum, Botanic Gardens Trust, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Museum of Contemporary Art, Powerhouse Museum, State Library of NSW and State Records NSW have embraced this ground-breaking exhibition’s innovative vision and made cultural material from their extensive collections available for inclusion.
This landmark exhibition brings iconic treasures together for the very first time and showcases them to metropolitan, regional and interstate audiences. If you have been to Dubbo Regional Gallery – The Armati Bequest before, you will know that the huge space is divided into a number of smaller galleries. This exhibition, however, is so big it takes up the entire exhibition space, and as such is the largest exhibition ever shown in the Dubbo region.
There is a Picasso, a Durer, as well as colonial furniture, Jurassic fossils, and a Banksia collected by Joseph Banks himself (wow!) and other natural history objects to name but a few of the 100 + items that will be on display.
Yet to have this exhibition alongside the collection of the Museum’s permanent display is significant in its own right. Whilst we as residents of NSW can take pride in what our State has collected for generations, and continue to do so into the future, we can as a local community take great pride in what our own city has gathered throughout its history. Our objects may not have the big International names that the larger State institutions have, but it doesn’t mean our Pool Room is any less significant, it just tells a more intimate story of us – and there isn’t a set of joisting sticks in sight!
This fantastic exhibition opens on Saturday April 4 and runs until May 10 – in the mean time there is always People, Places, Possessions: Dubbo Stories on show at the Museum.
posted by WORD OF MOUTH: WPCC BLOG @ 9:28 PM
1 Comments:
At 8 May 2009 7:32 AM ,
Anonymous said...
I wasn't too sure whether this was where I should post........
This is not fine tuned but a critique non the less!
A collection in its own right should thread itself a common theme -an aspect that evokes a sense of relationship, chronology and perhaps of duplicity.
A collection such as this one so aptly named reflects a disjointed relationship between our past, present and our future and this isn’t necessarily a negative criticism. It is after all an omnipotent mix of prized possessions handpicked by a higher authority- trusted advisors on ‘what was’ and ‘what is’. A little like our own Australian history you could say. From colonial furniture and aboriginal artefacts to acquired international works of art it provides us with nothing but fragments of unrelated worlds and of which aren’t easily understood by a public majority.
Our past as it seems, is summed up by ‘ancient’ pieces of furniture, native flora and criminal photographs – an imaginative journey paints a picture of quality family time around the kitchen table, a fascination with nature and a convict heritage upon which (as we have been told) we founded our dreams. All of which seem foreign to us now. We should thank such higher authorities as museums for allowing such insight and foundation, for a present day anthropomorphic study by the Kingpins would not seem relevant to this exhibition.
The multimedia performance piece by the all girl artistic troupe – the kingpins is a sad mirror that reflects our fading future although the work in itself rests on its vibrancy. Its strong dynamic, loud and captivating presence asserts itself into the white cubed arena – vibrating and echoing messages of our superficial and lack lustre present.
The piece in the abstract sense is a reminder of our own duplicity, our own need to conform – in a world so far from a laborious convict past are we really taking advantage of a never-ending supply of possibilities? We opt for the mass produced rather than the hand crafted, we study our introduced breed of buxus hedge before stepping foot into our native landscape, we would rather view a collection of politically accepted works of art from acclaimed institutions than immerse ourselves in the understanding of their existence.
The inclusion of the Joseph Beuys Felt Suit is merely a boasting point. A contemporary artistic grandfather such as Beuys plays no significant relationship in our Australian collective and thus remains an oddity in the group – Beuys still remains the outcast and far far far from his motherland. In its own right though the piece does conjure an artistic chronology a reason for the inclusion of the Whiteley I suppose. But still doesn’t explain the Japanese textile piece although amazingly handcrafted.
Does this “Great collection” as the hype claims record our development as a nation or for that matter as a people? As I retrod the steps of knowledge along these somewhat unrelated tangents of time it became evident to me that our history therefore our culture is broken one. As much as we would love to argue against this point it is in fact a truth – this collection does inpart “provide an insight into our national spirit” a spirit that is forced to fight on, as witnessed through the Kingpins.
Whilst Streeton may have nothing on a Picasso, should he have been present during the cubist reign and its aftermath I am sure he would have had a few words to say about being featured in the same collection – a collection that for some is worth preserving.
Miss Tara
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