How Ngununggula brought a world-class gallery to the Southern Highlands
After a massive local push, and years of hustling, Ben Quilty’s regional gallery vision has paid off.
If you drive through the sleepy streets of East Bowral, winding through the quiet suburb on the outskirts of the bustling regional hub, under the shadow of Mt Gibraltar, you arrive at Ngununggula. As you turn onto ‘Gallery Lane’ and drive up the hill to the large converted dairy, it’s hard to know what to expect. The space from the outside looking in is familiar to anyone who has been to a regional gallery, albeit bigger than usual: there’s the historic old building, a well-lit front reception, and a tiled floor that clicks gently with your steps. But, as you walk through into the first room of the exhibition, all of that flies out the window.
Suddenly, you feel as though you could be in a side wing of New York City’s MoMA.
The room is dark and quiet. On the walls, projected photographs of Picnic at Hanging Rock-esque women lost in the natural bushland instantly grab your attention. In the middle of the room, smoking coals sit on plinths with delicate symbols of life — a pear, a pomegranate — perched on top of the ashes. This is the first room of four that display works from Tamara Dean’s exhibition, Hijinks in the Hydrangeas; the first exhibition to fill the large space at the new gallery.
“Her work is just dazzling and extraordinary and you need to be good to make a show as big as she’s made. It’s a very big space,” says Ben Quilty, the Archibald-winning artist and one of the primary drivers in making Ngununggula a reality. As you step through the four large rooms, taking in the fierce yet dark beauty of Dean’s work, your expectations of the words “regional gallery” shift.
Tamara Dean’s exhibition is the perfect starting point for a gallery that has its sights set on creating a place that will inspire and challenge not just the local community, but travellers visiting from all around. With its gorgeous images that investigate Dean’s relationship with the natural environment — a relationship can change more quickly than a 14-year-old’s first fling — the exhibition itself is exquisite.
Speaking of her home in a valley below the highland’s escarpment, Dean says “it was horrific when the bushfires were here. But then, very quickly turned into a very nice necessary refuge from the virus.”
After her home survived the massive Currowan bushfire that savaged the south coast, it became not only a refuge but a place of work. As someone who is used to travelling to remote locations with teams of models for her shoots, Dean was suddenly left with nothing but her camera, her home and herself to do her work.
“I just turned the camera on myself, and I‘d head out into the landscape, on our property or on other private properties, and put myself in the landscape trying to really make the point that we are part of nature, not something that sits outside of nature,” she says, “it was quite a revelation for me that I could just go out the door and make work.”
The resulting images and accompanying sculptures are transfixing. Bright and beautiful, but with a dark underscore, they subvert the perceptions we have of the beauty around us. “I‘ve always integrated beauty into my work,” Dean says, “even when I’m talking about difficult things because I find that it’s more effective to have people engage with the work when it’s something that is beautiful, or compelling, or intriguing to look at.”
This subversive nature continues with the settings. As Quilty explains, “she very beautifully and poignantly said, ‘I want to make a show that uses the gardens of the Southern Highlands, which again, plays with everyone’s expectations’.”
He continues, “the gardens are, for me, such a symbol of the destruction of history in terms of putting up hedges and knocking down old-growth forests. And she’s used the gardens in such an unexpected way that the audience will think they’re going to see pretty photos of gardens, and they are pretty, but they’re also really, really dark, confronting, and incredibly personal.”
Meaning ‘for the people’, the name ‘Ngununggula’ was gifted to the gallery by local First Nations elder Aunty Velma Mulcahy who Quilty describes as “one of the great heroes of this area”. When asked what the gifting of that name meant to him, Quilty says “it was everything.”
Recognising the ancient First Nations history of the Southern Highlands was essential for Quilty. “Robertson was cold climate rainforest,” he says, “and around Bowral, it was dry sclerophyll forest and it was just massive, magnificent ancient forest from the escarpment all the way out to Taralga. We cleared it and put up hedges.”
Fronting up to how the settlers irrevocably changed the area is critical to Quilty, as is centring the culture and peoples that were lost. “It‘s more than a gesture,” he adds, “it’d be stupid of me not to somehow include that powerhouse cultural history in this place.” That’s front and centre as you walk in, too. Quandamooka woman and artist Megan Cope has installed a large work in the foyer celebrating the language, history and Dreamtime stories of the region.
When asked what’s next for the gallery, Megan Monte, the Director of Ngununggula, sees expansion. “I‘d love to see a really diverse sculpture program. We’re on really beautiful property here, and we’ve got space for it. So I’d love to be bigger and grow.” She says in addition to the Tai Chi, Yoga and education courses currently on offer, there will be a cafe run by the people from local Robertson favourite Moonacres and who knows what else. “Megan has laid out a program which I think is very exciting, five shows a year. People don’t realise they get to go five times a year and see something completely different each time,” says Quilty.
As for his vision for Ngununggula’s future, Quilty says “we want to fill it with kids... the football field and the skate park are theirs, but when kids have a sense of ownership over that beautiful old building, which they will have and they deserve, and they’re welcome to it, then I think it’s a success.”
Hijinks in the Hydrangeas is showing at Ngununggula until 17 December 2021. Tamara Dean is represented by Michael Reid Gallery in Sydney where her work is available for purchase.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout