Cairns Regional Gallery

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Cnr Abbott And Shields Streets, Cairns, Australia 4870+61 (07) 4046 4800

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My favourite exhibit Photo - Cairns Regional Gallery, Cairns, Australia

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Pack your Sense of Humour to Enjoy this Gallery

by koshkha

Northampton, United Kingdom

August 7, 2010

Best of IgoUgo Culture in Australia? If you believe the old jokes, you’ll find more culture in a yoghurt than you will down under but whilst it’s easy to knock our antipodean cousins it’s not always fair. In the Tropical North Queensland city of Cairns we found a ...Read more Culture in Australia? If you believe the old jokes, you’ll find more culture in a yoghurt than you will down under but whilst it’s easy to knock our antipodean cousins it’s not always fair. In the Tropical North Queensland city of Cairns we found a museum that was well worth a visit even it if hadn’t been raining (though I’ll admit that the weather did influence our decision to go). We were on a mission to find something artistic in this brash and rather ugly city and hoped that the Cairns Regional Gallery would fit the bill.

The gallery is in a building on the corner of Abbott and Shields Streets that dates back to 1936, making it old enough to be considered a ‘heritage’ building in such a new country. The building was originally the office of the Public Curators. I’m not sure what they were curating for the public but the office closed and was reopened in 1995 to become the Cairns Regional Gallery. To be fair the building with it’s pillars and classical touches does give the impression of being a lot older than it actually is. From the outside one notices not only the architecture but also the presence of a café-restaurant spilling out onto the sidewalk outside.

We arrived about 15 minutes before the gallery was due to open on a Sunday. Whilst it’s open daily, on Sundays it’s closed in the morning and we were a bit too early for the 1 pm first entrance. We sheltered under the covered area by the door and waited for action to commence.

Entrance fees are not high and it cost us just AU$ 5 each to get in. At the time that was about £2.50 equivalent. Once we’d paid and picked up a pamphlet about the gallery we got stuck into wandering around. There’s very much a local theme about the place with a strong emphasis on art connected with the North Queensland area, either through the artists themselves or the subject of their work. It’s predominantly very modern in feel, a bit like the city and the country itself, and probably won’t appeal to people who like easy accessible art. The ‘I don’t know much about art but I know what I like’ brigade may well find that they DON’T like a lot of what’s in here.

We started on the ground floor in the Lady Hunter Gallery where the exhibits had a strong environmental theme with sculptures made of flotsam, plants with acupuncture needles sticking in them, sculptures of coal and solar panels and a fascinating series of photographs of a floating hut placed in different environments to contrast and challenge ideas of paradise. There were pieces relating to a quarantine island and large patches of sand prints on the floor. I won’t claim that everything was accessible or entertaining but a lot of it was fascinating.

Up on the first floor we found a modern design exhibition showing work by artists from Queensland. This ranged from furniture and lamps through door handles and a group of so-called ‘hard furnishings’. I think my favourite gallery was one showing an exhibition called ‘In your dreams’ in which a large number of local and international artists had been given a simple wooden box and challenged to express their dreams or their interpretation of dreams within the constraints of the boxes. Some decorated their boxes, others put things inside them or around them but everything was different. There were photographs, models, embroideries and all manner of different ways to explore the dream world.

Finally up on the top floor we found a display of strange metal work with sinuous curves and combinations pieces of wood and metal together. Seahorses, musical instruments and people were all expressed by a single artist in very different ways. Would I want one in my home? Probably not, but with my husband who started his working life as a sheet metal worker standing next to me, there was no risk of me being allowed to not understand just how difficult this work was to do or how much I should be admiring it.

We headed back to the ground floor for a final look around the Lady Hunter gallery again before passing 15 minutes buying nothing in the shop and then heading off in search of coffee. If you can’t see the art or the humour in modern art then it’s probably best to avoid this gallery. If you’re open-minded enough to give it a go and have sufficient sense of humour to not take it all too seriously, then I recommend a visit.
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Cairns Regional Gallery

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Pack your Sense of Humour to Enjoy this Gallery