Will Owen visits the Art Gallery of NSW and finds the Yiribana Gallery in poor condition.
Quite simply, the Yiribana Gallery is in a shocking state. The floors are abraded, chiseled, broken, and spotted. Whoever thought they could get away with a black and white floor that looks like a bad dot painting ought to be brought up before the Board of Museological Aesthetics. The exhibition case where the Tiwi tutini used to stand is gone, but you can still look through a window at the Museum’s storage space if you get tired of the art.
Maybe I was just cranky because workmen on a badly greased mobile lift were sawing away at the ceiling while I was trying to watch Destiny Deacon and Michael Riley’s film, I Don’t Want to be a Bludger. But it was more than that. It was also the fact that despite the capacious screening room that had been built in the middle of the exhibition space for the film, the audio system was completely stuffed. Almost anywhere you stood in the gallery, no matter what painting you were looking at, you could hear the film’s soundtrack.
