New Art Gallery of SA director Rhana Devenport shares her vision
“YOU won’t be hearing the words Adelaide Contemporary anymore,” said the new director of the Art Gallery of SA, Rhana Devenport. “This is the first and last time I will say them.”
THE new director of the Art Gallery of SA says plans for a gallery at the former Royal Adelaide Hospital site should be expanded to include more than solely indigenous works.
Rhana Devenport said the gallery needed to feature all the arts, from visual to performance and film, to give Adelaide a fresh identity compared to other new galleries around Australia.
“You won’t be hearing the words Adelaide Contemporary anymore,” she said.
“This is the first and last time I will say them.”
Ms Devenport arrived in Adelaide last Friday to officially take up the reins of the Art Gallery.
She replaces former director Nick Mitzevich, who proposed the need for a new gallery.
In its March election campaign, the Liberals launched a new vision for the gallery, to be managed by the South Australian Museum instead of the Art Gallery, and dedicated to Aboriginal traditional and contemporary art.
“It has moved through different phases with the change of government,” Ms Devenport said.
“That’s understandable. I am used to this kind of thing. Every major cultural project has its own momentum and life.”
Ms Devenport, who has spent years working in the visual arts in Brisbane, Sydney and New Zealand, said there were many different forms of cultural expression today. She pointed to London’s Tate Modern Tanks, the world’s first museum dedicated to performance art, and MONA’s Dark Mofo in Hobart exploring performance at the winter solstice.
“What is most important is to think about the whole of all the cultural organisations here,” she said.
“We have all got independent strengths and contributions to make. There is position here to work collaboratively.
“It makes a lot of sense. It’s inevitable, it’s logical. It needs to happen. I have absolutely no doubt that it is of importance to this city. This is not about the Art Gallery having ambitions to be bigger. This is what Adelaide needs”.
