Click on the image to enlargeThe chances are that they will be given that something approaching $10 million has been in invested in the project – approx dollar for dollar Government and Council funding apparently. Some will be amazed at just what you get for that much money and inevitably there will be some who will say that the money could have been better spent elsewhere and in ways that delivered better social outcomes.
Depending on what goes on in this refurbished building they could be right or very wrong. Nobody will see much of a hint of any of that this weekend. After all, in the end, this is just a building and what goes on it that is likely to justify the expenditure.
However, looking at the building from the street if you wish to be impressed by your glimpse of the future, and what is in store for you, you had better not glimpse upwards on the way in or from across the street. Those pesky and abominable air conditioning ducts are still there in all their glory and announcing the fact that if you do not manage the details you compromise the overall effort and its goals.
If you are spending near enough to $10 million you would think that you might spend some time getting the details right, this is an art gallery after all. The promise was that it would happen but looking at the roofline it does not seem so. Apparently these ducts are going to be camouflaged so as they will visually disappear. Is it leopard spots or tiger stripes that are being considered?
It is an interesting idea that seems to have more bureaucratic credibility than visual integrity. It is sadly an indicator that near enough seems to be good enough no matter how much you throw at a project and pay the project managers.
However, look downwards on the way in and look for more positive signs when you turn up to see how the money (your money) has been spent.
10 comments:
It seems that down in St John’s St. there are philistines all over the place and it seems that they are allowed to cross any line they like …… that is if they see it anyways ….. As we say in the IT world "crap in, crap out".
I think that it has been said before but a way to deal with this visual autrocity is as they have done at the Site du Centre Pompidou given that this is an art gallery.
The ducts could be painted in very bright colours and a big floating red circle hung on the building, like in the graphic, to draw attention to them.
Then it could always be said that it was intensional and one could always point to Paris for the precedent.
It'd look great I think!
Question.
Is the lollipop sign with the encircled 60 a score out of 100 for the level of design excellence for the prsentation of this important public design?
Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
I drove past the museum tonight on the way home and I looked up from the traffic jam.
I think that someone thinks by painting these things gray they disappear.
BREAKING NEWS you can still see them and they still look bloody terrible. Sorry that isn't news.
God is in the detail!
I have just driven past the museum on Wellington St and there was this chap up on the roof. It LOOKED LIKE he was trying to remove the lumpy bits before the critical public turn up tomorrow to sling their stones and arrows. Thanks to the ratepayers I suppose this is happening. Let's just hope that all us ratepayers are not being STUNG YET AGAIN for the incompetence that gave this whole silly affair oxygen. I’ll be back tomorrow to see the outcome of this last minute rectification but I’ll not be surprised to find that I was wrong and that what was in fact in progress was a camouflage job of the airbrushed dog’s balls kind. Let’s see!
Well, having been to the public exposé of the newly refurbishe QVAG today, I have to say it's the best I've ever seen the old gal look. Free of curatorial dictatorship, empty of vestiges of the past, it is full of the potential of our collective imaginings. Well done, QVAG, leave it just as it is!
Well said anonymous! I came to leave my thoughts and I’m finding it hard to gather them. The first thing I saw when I got inside was a lot of white, a bloody lot of white or is it a lot of bloody white. As anonymous says the place is full of potential and that the elephant in the room and I visualise it as being a very big white one. I suppose that the place has enough art to put on the walls and skater about the floors. But are there enough people on staff with enough wherewithal to make sense of it. If that is a possibility then Launceston’s hapless ratepayers must be scared shitless of how much more this adventure is going to cost them. You can be sure of one thing and that is someone will be demanding more again to help prop up their vision etc. etc. etc. The vision of a white elephant in full gallop is a terrifying thought to be sure. Anyway time to go and earn a dollar even if more of it is likely to go towards helping feed the white jumbo. OH I also think that for 10 million bucks we could have managed to disappear the aircon ducting but it doesn’t look like it. Maybe the next generation can pick up that ball and the bill.
Jim Dickenson,Launceston, in The Examiner today had a bit to say about "Museum omissions" ... to quote ... "HOW small-town, small- minded can you get when at the preview of the refurbished Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, not one word, not one simple sentence from all the opening speeches of praise and backslapping acknowledged former director Patrick Filmer-Sankey?
It was he who generated the excitement and got the project moving and for months guided it through the initial stages of design and then construction.
That he was ignored was inexcusably mean-spirited."
The sad fact is that this unlikely to turn out to be the only "omission" and that others will be swept under a carpet somewhere if you listen to some of the chat out there, "small-town" and other kinds.
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