Beyond Real: Part 1(Room Notes)

“Joanna Capon and the board of ACP, Gael Newton, artists, collectors, writers, curators, conservators, ladies and gentlemen

Thank you Alasdair for those kind words of introduction and thank you for the invitation to speak here at tonight's opening of Beyond Real

At the outset, I would like to acknowledge ACP for the abundance of energy and vigour with which you are managing your exhibitions program, your publications activities, your capital investment and your promotion of contemporary art and artists.

I am also pleased to acknowledge that, along with other members of Australia's Contemporary Art Organisations (the CAOS network), you made a compelling, clear case for greater financial support at the time of the [Contemporary Visual Arts and Craft] Inquiry. That meant that a clear recommendation could be made.

Happily, the Commonwealth Government with the support of the State Governments accepted a significant part of those recommendations in the context of the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy.

The perspective that ACP is bringing, the events that have been planned, the increases in fees paid to artists and writers and the new equipment and facilities reflect the greater assertiveness that can be expressed by an organisation certain of its recurrent funding. I am sure that I reflect a feeling in the room that although even more could be possible, a great deal has been achieved already and it's great to be part of it. I congratulate Alasdair and his team here for bringing this about.

This is the third exhibition arising from a Partnership Agreement with the NGA. As the invitation to this evening's opening shows, this is a capital P/capital A Partnership Agreement.

It also marks one of those happy occasions in the art world where two organisations, ACP and the NGA, operating in separate parts of the country come together in a creative collaboration: one plus one equals three. With this provocative, entertaining, thoughtful exhibition, you get the sense of everything operating as it should.

Here are works that belong to the national estate through the photographic collections of the NGA. With the close involvement of conservators, they are being loaned to a contemporary arts organisation in another city with the enthusiastic goodwill of lender and borrower. This is a valuable collaboration and sharing of professional expertise. The exhibition is also supported by private loans.

Alasdair's role as curator of the exhibition means that another curator's perspective has been applied to the NGA's collections. This has been done with the unwavering support of the NGA's curator Gael Newton. Gael has commented to me that she what she likes most about this partnership with ACP is "seeing another curator using the collection in a creative way to integrate the images of an archive with contemporary practice."

With this exhibition, an audience that may not know the works is getting to see them. Whilst I am certain that a number in the gallery here tonight have been to the NGA, I am also confident that many have not. This is the NGA's way of getting parts of its collections seen. In turn, the NGA hopes to stimulate interest in what it does - believe me, there is a lot more to see.

With this exhibition, there is a catalogue that has been produced. Apart from documenting the exhibition, the catalogue adds to the store of cultural memory: it is a vital record of the works and curatorial ideas that have been applied.

One of the most significant aspects of this partnership is that it enables a reinterpretation of those collections: we are all invited to consider the works afresh, with new adjacencies, with new curatorial insights. There is also a significant element of this collaboration, which is an assertion that the exhibition matters, that the works that are exhibited here ought to be considered carefully, that the curatorial ideas deserve reflection.

Another element of the assertion that this exhibition matters is the interplay of newer with more established artists and international with Australian artists. Too often, we are not given the opportunity to see work in these sorts of contexts - that is true for artists as well as well as for collectors and the wider audience. This fresh curatorial eye enables these works, some of them decades old, to become contemporary again. Older works are being examined through the prism of now, this space, this city, this curator.

In the introduction to the catalogue, we are brought quickly to one of the key points of this exhibition: we are asked to consider these works in the context of the "breakdown of any clear divide between the real and the hyperreal" and with this breakdown, we are asked further to consider that the "dual qualities of photographic realism and artifice have ceased to seem paradoxical". We are told in other material to expect that this exhibition "addresses the interface between fantasy and identity".

Being sharpened up to this point is one of the great joys of this exhibition: what is trickery? What is false? What is really contrived? When is illusion reality?

Amongst the works, we explore these questions, in the language used in the essay, through "artistic fascination with eroticism …brooding introspection …the ploy of natural and familiar poses …the device of popular culture …a sense of the ominous …the sculpted object …different textures …trust and intuition …survival, vanity and aging". Each artist takes us to a place where there is a new character waiting to engage us.

Collections are at the core of the NGA. It is perhaps not as well known as it should be that the NGA holds an outstanding collection of 19th and 20th century European and American prints and photographs - they are amongst the largest and most important half dozen such collections in the world. These works have been collected mostly over the last 30 years, and the responsibility which comes with such a collection is that they should be made to work hard.

Within the context of Australia's cultural institutions, I find it helpful to think of the NGA as a different place and a different idea.

The Place aspect is obvious: it's the building and the collections, curatorial activities, the education programs and publications. Canberra is a different place - there is little doubt about that. It is after all the only twentieth Century Capital City in the country. It is not surprising that this gets reflected in the National Gallery's core collections.

The 'different idea' element is perhaps less obvious: the NGA operates within the context of outstanding state and territory based institutions each of which performs national roles. These galleries also happen to operate in those parts of the country where most of the people live and therefore they have access to larger audiences. To a greater or lesser extent, the State collections reflect the blended taste and collecting priorities of many generations of directors, curators and trustees. The pride that each State community has in their own gallery, and the profound sense of ownership that arises, is evidence enough that the sum of those acquisitions remains hugely relevant today.

The collections of the NGA are reflective of an institution that, as the current Chairman Harold Mitchell puts it is 'still inventing itself'. Apart from the collections of European and American prints and photography, other parts of the collection, including the late nineteenth and twentieth Century collection of all media are the finest in our region. The Asian collections give great emphasis to South East Asia and India. The Indian Trade cloth collection and Indonesian textile collections are the finest in the world. The NGA holds a strong and representative collection of Australian art with particular strengths from the 1940s onwards. It also holds an almost encyclopaedic collection of Australian prints and the country's largest indigenous collection.

Given the collections, the circumstances and the geography of the NGA, these exhibitions and these partnerships are essential. In this particular partnership with ACP, we have a vital Arts Organisation and a wide community of enthusiastic support as evidenced tonight. With this exhibition, we have older work made contemporary in dialogue with new work. It is relevant and exciting.

It gives me pleasure to formally open the exhibition.”