Inside the Gold Coast’s cultural rebirth as a contemporary arts destination
Queensland’s Gold Coast is becoming a bastion of contemporary art – but is it ready for the Ladies Lounge, where men are only admitted on the condition they undergo butler training?
You may not initially see a connection between Broadbeach and the Palace of Versailles. But for contemporary artist Michael Zavros, guest artistic director of Gold Coast arts festival Bleach, the vision has always been clear.
“While I was watching the equestrian events at Versailles during the Paris Olympics last year, I noticed they’d made this sand area within the palace as the backdrop to the dressage and show jumping,” says Zavros, who grew up on the coast but now lives on an estate just outside Brisbane.
“When the riders make it to the final round, they compete to a choreographed piece – it can be anything from classical opera to hard rock and pop. I thought, there’s something here. Let’s use our famous beaches to do something similar.”
So began preparations for Cavalcade, which will be an even bigger spectacle than the event that inspired it. At sunset on the closing nights of Zavros’s first festival, the shores of Kurrawa Beach will light up with a grand finale of live opera, orchestra, dressage and trick riding.
“This is one of my wonderful – or terrible – brainwaves,” he says. “So much of this festival has been pie in the sky. We’ve constantly been told, ‘That’s not possible’ or ‘It isn’t safe’. But I did set out to deliver things that people weren’t expecting.”
For years, the “Goldy” has had a reputation for its lucrative theme parks, surf breaks, big-budget superhero films and for being a developers’ high-rise wonderland.So how do locals feel about the city using their beloved beaches for edgy contemporary art?
Zavros, who has just stepped off an early morning Brisbane-to-Sydney flight for a whirlwind press tour, leans in as though to share a secret: “Gold Coasters have this appetite for otherness. For something wildly different. They can be quite conservative in some ways but very open to oddness and spectacle in others.”
Bleach, which opens on July 31, was delivered for eight years by founder Louise Bezzina, who this year will present her final Brisbane Festival before becoming director of Brisbane Powerhouse. She says Zavros is a natural fit.
“Having Michael return home to direct this festival was, in some ways, really trying to make a statement that the Gold Coast is serious,” she says. “The thing I truly love about the Gold Coast is that it has this unapologetic irreverence that makes it stand out. The more it leans into that authentic self, the more notice everybody else is going to take.”
In many ways the coast Zavros knew as a youth was different to the one he sees now. For starters, the Gold Coast City Art Gallery at which he volunteered before moving to Brisbane to study at the Queensland College of Art underwent a significant makeover from 2018 and 2021.
A key pillar in the City of Gold Coast’s cultural precinct masterplan, the centre reopened as the Home of the Arts. The council has invested more than $100m to date in making HOTA – which has an exhibition space, outdoor stage, indoor theatre and cinema – the largest public gallery outside a capital city.
“Cool stuff used to happen on the Gold Coast, you just needed to know where to look,” Zavros says. “Now you don’t have to know because it’s happening right around the corner.”
Ahead of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, southeast Queensland will experience exponential growth and the Gold Coast is expected to reach a population of one million in the years following the Games. Change has been driven largely by the city’s mayor, Tom Tate, whom Bezzina describes as a “really important character in the mix”.
“He’s very ambitious, very big thinking and none of this would have happened without him,” she says.
In 2023, under Tate’s direction, the city launched Experience Gold Coast, which merged five key entities to bolster tourism and the local economy in the lead-up to the Olympics.
Building on the success of films such as Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis – produced entirely on the coast – a deal also was made to move the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards to HOTA for three years. Actor Russell Crowe hosted this year’s ceremony in February.
The arts and culture arm of Experience Gold Coast is headed by Yarmila Alfonzetti, whose CV includes stints directing the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and State Opera South Australia. Speaking to The Australian from HOTA’s rooftop Exhibitionist Bar on an unusually overcast day, Alfonzetti radiates unshakeable positivity for someone staring down the barrel of her biggest challenge yet: creating a regional arts precinct that will rival those in Australia’s cultural capitals.
“We’re growing at the rate of knots to become the sixth largest city in the country,” Alfonzetti says. “We’re going to blink and have a million people who expect a diverse arts offering. So we better hurry.”
Building on HOTA’s audience of close to one million visitors annually is a top priority for Alfonzetti.
“Of course, everyone wants to build up the commercial viability of their business. But that isn’t why this arts precinct exists,” she says. “The central tenet of Experience Gold Coast is to support the Gold Coast in becoming the lifestyle capital of the world. A big part of what we do – in fact the largest part – is develop the tourism economy to provide incentives to fall in love with the area.”
To attract visitors from interstate – and pique the interest of locals – HOTA needs to secure exhibitions such as its current show, Writers Revealed. An Australian exclusive direct from the British Library and London’s National Portrait Gallery, Writers Revealed positions authors’ portraits – Jane Austen and Shakespeare among them – next to artefacts of their interior lives such as handwritten letters, scribbled-out lines in plays and draft manuscripts. A drawcard for literary buffs is John Milton’s contract for the publication of Paradise Lost, believed to be the first agreement of its kind between an author and publisher.
Alfonzetti is bold in her approach to securing these exhibitions. “I’m being absolutely dirty about it,” she says, laughing. “I’m unashamedly hunting southeast Queensland exclusives because I want people to travel for it.”
In 2023 HOTA brought out a pop art exhibition from prominent collector Jose Mugrabi’s New York collection, featuring artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol.
In September the gallery will welcome a solo exhibition from one of Australia’s most prolific artists, Ken Done. Visitors can expect to see more than 100 works including new commissions and celebrated design collaborations with luxury brands Romance Was Born and BMW.
A look inside HOTA’s art collection reveals works by esteemed Australian artists such as Charles Blackman, William Robinson, Ben Quilty, Jenny Watson and Bruce Nauman. Valued at almost $35m, it is the most valuable trove of art held by a regional Australian gallery.
The curatorial team are busy preparing HOTA’s second-floor gallery for a Bleach exhibition hosted by the Gold Coast’s most irreverent guest artist. Kirsha Kaechele made headlines when she successfully bid in Tasmania’s Supreme Court to continue excluding male audiences from her Ladies Lounge, a women-only exhibition at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art, reversing the roles traditionally seen in opulent men’s clubs. At Bleach she has decided to admit men – but only on the condition they undergo butler training (”Well, most men won’t (qualify), but for the select few who do, there will be many wonderful opportunities to serve women,” says Kaechele). Patrons will be encouraged to air any frustrations about the exhibition experience with The Complaints Department next door, a tongue-in-cheek companion performance art piece by Tora Lopez. Kaechele will soon audition strippers to work as topless male waiters serving female patrons at the exhibition.
Zavros says it took some time to persuade Kaechele to give the Ladies Lounge a tropical twist.
“She’s one of those artists that doesn’t really compromise,” he says. “It’s a very big production for HOTA with an entire container of lavish flooring, curtains, everything on its way.”
Kaechele, who is originally from California but now lives in Hobart with husband and MONA boss David Walsh, says her initial reservations were that “the Gold Coast might be too conservative”.
“Was the mayor really prepared for the potential legal fallout? What if men go hysterical again and file another lawsuit?” she asks, humorously. “But after three cognacs, (the mayor) assured me that he fully grasps the gravity of our mission. After six cognacs he declared, “I hope we get sued!”.”
While Kaechele welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision for the Ladies Lounge to continue operating as a women’s only space, she believes the ruling is “irrelevant to the art”.
When it came to working with Zavros, whose own art often straddles the line between satire and realism, Kaechele says, “It’s always a pleasure to work with a curator who is also an artist... It is also useful to have a curator who cannot enter your artwork, and is therefore unlikely to intrude on your creative process or impose their opinions on your work.”
Zavros also called in a favour from National Gallery of Australia director Nick Mitzevich to line up a visit from American contemporary artist Jeff Koons to the festival. Known for his balloon-style stainless steel animal sculptures, Koons will be interviewed by Alison Kubler, editor-in-chief of respected arts magazine The Vault and Zavros’s wife.
“(Alison and I) are lucky our roles in the art world are very different. We’ve had to be careful to keep our careers separate because everyone is hyper-aware of nepotism. But I suppose we’ve reached a point of seniority where I will only work with her on certain things,” says Zavros.
While the profile of the Gold Coast arts scene continues to rise, keeping local talent in the area is a challenge for art dealers and artists alike.
Art dealer Anthea Polson worked for Zavros’s first gallerist, Win Schubert, before opening her namesake gallery in 2009. “I remember Michael when he was selling his works for $900 and I think he will always have that connection to (this area),” she says. “But most of the artists we now represent are from the Northern Rivers (region of NSW) because people who live on the Gold Coast feel they need to get represented by people down south (in Sydney and Melbourne). It’s a real shame.”
At another commercial gallery, 19 Karen, director Terri Lew is primarily focused on representing international artists. “The ratio of our gallery roster tends to be 70 per cent international to 30 per cent Australian,” Lew says. “It gives us a unique edge that nobody else has got. I haven’t seen many artists on the Gold Coast who aren’t already represented.”
Kimberley Stokes is one artist who has chosen to stay in her home city. She also works as the emerging curator at HOTA to supplement her practice. “A lot of our artists are really connected to HOTA, but we need a full arts ecology across the city too. Many of us want to stay but feel we have to move because there’s no other ways to grow,” Stokes says.
Part of that ecology is Swell Sculpture Festival, held at Currumbin Beach annually in September.
Executive director Dee Steinfort chuckles as she gestures at Currumbin’s largely ungentrified beach town feel: “There’s a joke about crossing three creeks to get down here … we don’t leave our bubble down here.”
Rivalling Sydney’s Sculpture by the Sea, this year’s art walk will show 85 works made by 230 artists; a further 150 artists will perform in the supporting fringe festival. Artistic director Natasha Edwards, who co-founded the festival 23 years ago, puts Swell’s success down to its ability to maintain a “real coastal community energy” while growing international interest from emerging, mid-career and established artists.
All of this activity is promising as Alfonzetti looks forward toward the Olympic Games and beyond.
“There isn’t a single doubt in my mind that all of the opportunity … is within our reach,” she says. “The appetite is here, the will is here, the passion is here, the money is here. It’s just a matter of time.”
Caught between the retro nostalgia of its fervent surf community and the sophistication needed to reach the big leagues of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, the Gold Coast is in the middle of a reckoning.
“The Gold Coast was made in the image of Miami overseas but now it’s becoming a city in its own right,” says Zavros. “Ever since I can remember, our consciousness has been asking, “Who are we? What are we? How are we changing?’ ”
If seeing is believing, the questions are best answered by experiencing the Goldy first-hand.
Bleach Festival, July 31 to August 10. Writers Revealed, until August 3 and Ken Done: No Rules, September 13 to February 15, at HOTA. Swell Sculpture Festival, September 12 to 21.
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