NEWS

Karen Quinlan AM, Arts Centre Melbourne CEO has announced a new contemporary artist commissioning program for the Australian Performing Arts Collection, the first of its kind since the iconic Theatres Building (under the Spire) opened 40 years ago.

Beginning with a commission from renowned Australian photographic artist Bill Henson AO, this new program will identify contemporary Australian artists and fund them to create new works for Arts Centre Melbourne to further develop the Public Art Collection, celebrating the best of the visual and performing arts in Australia today. This first Commission has been generously supported by Peter Jopling AM KC, and Paul and Wendy Bonnici.

As the Theatres Building is reimagined for a new generation of artists and audiences as part of the Reimagining Arts Centre Melbourne project, Quinlan says the institution will embark on a journey to add new works to this outstanding collection, with Henson’s dramatic new work featuring David Hallberg, The Australian Ballet Artistic Director, opening the series.

"Bill’s signature aesthetic incorporates strong contrasts between light and dark, carefully employing light as a dramatic tool to highlight drama, fear or wonder, while duality is also an omnipresent theme often in which faces may be blurred, partly shadowed or sometimes do not directly face the viewer."

This new program brings full circle the vision of John Truscott AO, the art director and designer renowned for his Oscar-winning work on the film Camelot (1967), who ultimately designed Arts Centre Melbourne’s lush interiors. During construction works in the 70s and 80s Truscott commissioned his circle of artistic friends to create a dedicated suite of new Australian artworks for the walls of the theatre foyers.

Visitors to the Theatres Building and Hamer Hall can wander the halls and foyers and enjoy the Public Art Collection, which includes works by some of Australia’s greatest visual artists including Arthur Boyd, Roger Kemp, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, Mary Macqueen and Jeffrey Smart, alongside an extraordinary collection of ground-breaking Western Desert paintings.

About the new commission (Untitled 2024)

Bill Henson is one of Australia's most distinguished artists. An internationally acclaimed photographer, his enigmatic images have been exhibited extensively both in Australia and around the world for over five decades.

This new commission was inspired by the deconstruction of the State Theatre as part of the Reimagining project and features David Hallberg as archetypal artist, superimposed over an interior of the State Theatre taken by leading architectural photographer John Gollings during the early days of renewal works.

The State Theatre is currently a construction site while it undergoes its most significant upgrade since opening in 1984: "I stood amongst the ordered chaos of the site, barely recognisable as a stage, as performers made way for machinery and workers in hi-vis," said Quinlan.

"The theatre was built for our two Resident Companies, Opera Australia and The Australian Ballet, and I began to wonder about the ‘starkness’ of the contrast between the precision, form, beauty and strength of ballet dancers and the carefully planned destruction of the wonderful auditorium surrounding me."

This ‘contrast’ led to the decision to place Hallberg, The Australian Ballet Artistic Director at the heart of Henson’s new commission.

"In the studio I found myself thinking about David as a Dantesque figure. It just popped into my head and the more incongruous the image seemed, the more compelling the strangeness of it became for me... I knew almost immediately that my disembodied vision of Dante needed to float, or perhaps rise up, in the midst of this vast industrial wasteland of a building site," said Henson.

For Hallberg, floating and rising above is part of pushing the limits of body and performance, which made for an exciting sense of anticipation as the pair came together for the new commission. "I have always had the most interesting experiences with artists from different mediums. They see dance and the dancer in a different way; through a different lens. I never wanted to work with someone from the same language. It is always more interesting to have a different viewpoint. Better angles come of it."

Hallberg described working with Henson as meditative and direct. "At times, a photographer can just shoot and not direct, forcing you to make and improvise. For him it was about subtlety, and if you really listen to what he has to say, the image is realised and therefore a dancer is seen through a lens not like the stage, but a meditative, mesmerised, personal eye."

The work will be on public display in the Theatres Building at Arts Centre Melbourne when the State Theatre reopens after refurbishment.

About the Australian Performing Arts Collection and the Public Art Collection

Arts Centre Melbourne is the proud custodian of two extraordinary collections: the Australian Performing Arts Collection and the Public Art Collection. The Australian Performing Arts Collection is dedicated to the collection, preservation and interpretation of Australia’s circus, dance, music, opera and theatre heritage, past and present. Collecting began in the 1970s and the collection now holds over 850,000 objects, including major acquisitions from Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave, Barry Humphries, Opera Australia, Circus Oz, Bell Shakespeare and The Australian Ballet.

The Public Art Collection was initiated by John Truscott while designing Arts Centre Melbourne’s interiors in the late 1970s. These foundation works from the Collection enhance the foyers of Arts Centre Melbourne’s venues and can be viewed whenever the buildings are open.

Image: ‘Untitled 2024’. L-R: David Hallberg, Bill Henson AO and Karen Quinlan AM. Photo by Mark Gambino.