National Portrait Gallery opens in new home
Posted
Updated
High tech: Gillian Raymond listens to an interview with Chrissy Amphlett on an iTouch device. (ABC News : Penny McLintock )
It has been more than 15 years in the making and cost more than $87 million but the National Portrait Gallery finally has its own, permanent home in Canberra.
The new National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is the first major building to be built in the Parliamentary Triangle in 20 years, tucked between the High Court of Australia and the National Gallery.
The NPG's previous home at Old Parliament House could only fit a fraction of the 1,200 works in the collection but the new 14,000 square metre space displays more than 450.
The building, designed by award-winning architect Richard Johnson, includes simple galleries lit by natural light and features wood, stone and plants from around Australia to contrast the direct concrete structure.
NPG director Andrew Sayers says the building complements its surroundings.
"This building being the newest arrival in the parliamentary zone really had to come up to the high standard set by the High Court and the National Gallery - its neighbours - and complete a campus square if you like," he said.
"It's a very different building from either of those and yet they seem to work together very well."
The galleries are designed to create a harmonious relationship between visitor and space, material and light.
"This building was designed specifically for portraits and portraits are almost always human in scale," Mr Sayers said.
"One of the things that works in this building particularly well I think is the sense that you have when you reach the galleries that you are face to face with another person and yet you've come from a very large open expansive landscape here in Canberra. And you never feel disconnected from that landscape either."
Mr Sayers says it accommodates more contemporary work.
"This is a contemporary building and it loves contemporary art - Old Parliament House was a historic building and lots of the historic works looked well in there but many of the contemporary pieces clashed with the carpet and so on," he said.
"This building also has much greater opportunity for us to show sculpture ... and to have much more material in showcases - the flow is designed so people can look in detail at some of these things."
Mr Sayer says having extra space will allow them to have a vibrant, changing exhibition program.
"It's going to be very dynamic - if you come back in a year the hang will be different, if you come back in five years it will be different again," he said.
"The way in which the building has been designed allows us a very flexible and fluid container whilst maintaining a fairly kind of a narrative of Australia's history."
He says the new space aids in complex story telling.
"It allows us to bring together many more people in a particular area or field, so we have whole walls of musicians, whole walls of politicians, whole walls of writers and artists," he said.
"It's only when you get that richness of texture that you can start to tease out some of the fabric of Australian culture."
Mr Sayer says he hopes visitors learn something new about the subjects on show.
"I'd be very surprised if a visitor came in and knew everything we tell them, and they knew all of the faces and all of the stories," he said.
"So primarily I would really like people to leave knowing something they didn't know, but also feeling our society and our history is something that is much more complicated and that we all have something in our own lives that we can contribute."
High tech tours
Visitors to the gallery can also take a tour using the latest technology - an iTouch device.
Online manager Gillian Raymond says the "mobile content device" contains 30 short films on some of the artists and subjects on show such as Professor Frank Fenner and singer Chrissy Amphlett.
"Where most people might be used to an audio tour that they just listen to as they go around a gallery, this actually presents people with video using archival footage, interviews with artists and with subjects and it really brings some of the stories to life," she said.
"The National Portrait Gallery's a bit unique, we're somewhere between an art gallery and a museum so basically we wanted to present stories of Australians to other Australians.
"We decided that video and audio is the best way to do that, to really enhance the visitor's experience."
Ms Raymond says the tours will change frequently to coincide with new hangs and the short films are also available for download from the NPG's website.
My Favourite Australian
A multi-platform exhibition capturing popular Australians and unsung heroes is one of the gallery's opening attractions.
The My Favourite Australian features 30 video portraits and is the result of a national competition launched by the ABC and the NPG earlier this year.
The votes are in and the top 10 most popular Australians list contains a few surprises with Olivia Newton John coming out on top followed by Peter Cundall, John Farnham, Bob Brown and John Howard.
Mr Sayers says it was surprising that statesmen rather than sporting heroes received the most votes.
"The recent past is much more compelling for people than the distant past," he said.
"Figures in history never really figure in people's imaginations when they're trying to think about who are the most important Australians - they are people from the recent past or from the present."
Twenty people were selected as the most inspiring unsung heroes.
"It really was a great opportunity to cast the light on people who are known only by a handful of people and yet who represent something that is about the shaping of Australia in one way or another," Mr Sayers said.
The brand new National Portrait Gallery opens to the public tomorrow and is hosting the Festival of the Face over the weekend featuring workshops with entertainer Rolf Harris.
