This year the Mundaring Arts Centre is celebrating 40 years. This week Lost Mundaring & Surroundings is discussing the Shire of Mundaring's Art Collection from its begining.
Part 4 History of MAC...
The location of the first Arts Centre placed severe limitations on its ability to provide services. It was not accessible on foot and was dangerous to access by car due to the business of the highway’s dual carriageway. The building itself proved to be quite inflexible as it lacked sufficient workshop facilities, exhibition and performance spaces, storage areas, amenities and parking. The MAC Board even went as far as describing the Mahogany Creek facilities as a ‘curatorial disaster’ whose drawbacks were ameliorated only by the ingenuity and initiative of MAC staff.
Following in the wake of the Sculpture Park, in 1986 the Shire of Mundaring acquired additional public art works through the residency of sculptor Joan Walsh Smith (The Spirit of Timber, 1986) and the community ceramic project. Taking 11 months to complete, Alison Brown organised the creation of 700 ceramic tiles by school children while Robert Juniper assisted I the designing and welding of leaf forms fro the final structures.
The first acquisition exhibition A Sense of Place was also held in 1986. This event was by invitation only and saw Mac Betts’ “Helena River in Flood” become the first artwork to be purchased for the Shire’s new art collection. This was followed in 1988 by the In Our Landscape exhibition which established the popularity and benefits of a regular acquisitive exhibition that supported local artists.
The next exhibition was held in 1990 and due to concerns over the standard of open entries, the exhibition returned to an invitation format with 15 artists participating. This in turn led to criticism of selectivity so in the following year the format returned to an open entry but a selection committee was introduced.
Exhibitions were initially held in the Civic Reception Area of the Shire’s Administration Building and could therefore only be displayed for a short time (10 days). This stretched the Arts Centre’s staff, who had to split their time between two venues in order to mind the exhibition works while the venue itself had not been designed as an display space for quality exhibitions in terms of lighting, hanging fixtures, wall and floor coverings. The 1991 exhibition was held at the Mundaring Arts Centre as the Shire’s premises was not available, allowing the show to run for 2 weeks. In future years, the exhibition alternated between an invitational and open format and was held at the Mundaring Arts Centre in Mahogany Creek and later at the present site in the old post office.
Thank you to the Mundaring Arts Centre for supplying the great photo* and information!
*(The photo below: The workshops in the original MAC office at Mahogany Creek, 1979)
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