Gold Coast City Gallery Events, Queensland Architecture Exhibition, QLD Australia Architects news

Gold Coast City Gallery Events, Australia

Architectural Exhibitions in Surfers Paradise, Queensland, eastern Australia

The Arts Centre Gold Coast, 135 Bundall Road, Surfers Paradise Qld 4217
Ph: 5581 6567
E: gallery@theartscentregc.com.au
W: www.theartscentregc.com.au
Open Weekdays 10am – 5pm Weekends 11am – 5pm

Las Vegas Studio – Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
29 June – 11 August 2013

15 Jun 2013

Gold Coast Architecture Events

The city of Las Vegas holds an unrivalled place in the popular imagination as a city of escapist dreams, spectacular night time illumination and pop culture entertainment on a grand scale. Architecture did not feature in this equation until 1972 when architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown published Learning from Las Vegas.

Their provocative book was based on an extensive research trip they undertook with their colleague Steven Izenour and architecture students of Yale University in 1968. They completed mapping surveys, took hundreds of photographs and filmed the urban landscape from a moving car and helicopter – all the time experimenting with new ways to render and explain contemporary American urban experience.

Their study of the strip city became one of the most influential and controversial books in 20th Century architecture. Its legacy continues to both inspire and challenge today.

The luscious colour photographs taken on the trip were not a major feature of the original or subsequent publications. Now retrieved from the archive of Venturi and Scott Brown in Philadelphia, they capture the Las Vegas of exuberant sculptural signage, of large cruising Chevrolets, and the incongruous meeting of the sparse desert landscape with the intensity of the bustling strip city.

Developed by the Museum im Bellpark Kriens, this exhibition of photographic prints and films has been presented to great acclaim in Europe and America, and now finds new audiences in the Australian city that shares some of the same mythology and form.

John Gollings Learning from Surfers Paradise – A Rephotography Project 1973-2013
22 June – 4 August 2013

Far away in Melbourne Australia in 1973, then recent architectural graduates John Gollings and Tony Styant-Browne and planner Mal Horner, inspired by Learning from Las Vegas, decided to come to the Gold Coast to make an Australian response to Venturi and Scott Brown’s provocative work. They arrived just after the major storm events of Christmas ‘73/74 and, using a range of cameras and lenses, Gollings extensively documented the ‘non’ architecture of hotels, commercial buildings – the signs and symbols of leisure of this holiday town that unbeknownst to them all was on the cusp of a wave of high-rise development.

He too experimented with image making and, in reference to LA artist Ed Ruscha, created an extraordinary sequence Every building on Surfers Paradise Blvd shot from a moving car. A new eight metre long print of this work will be presented in the exhibition alongside his own copy of Ruscha’s famous work.

Now regarded as Australia’s foremost architectural photographer, Gollings has returned over the past two years and worked with Curator Virginia Rigney to find, with considerable difficulty, these exact same sites and complete the largest ever re-photographic study of its type in the world. The contrasts between then and now are startling; revealing the extraordinary rate of change on the Gold Coast and the city as a place where nature is reconstructed and paradise is lost and reinvented.

FREE PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Monday 1 July
Exhibition Talk
6.00pm Martino Stierli, Professor, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich and Curator of Las Vegas Studio.
Presented as part of the Griffith University Art Architecture and Design Lecture Series and in conjunction with the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand 30th Annual Conference hosted at Griffith University, Gold Coast campus. Martino Stierli’s visit is supported by Griffith University, Bond University, Queensland University of Technology and the University of Queensland.

This two storey river front home is situated on an established residential island in Australia’s Gold Coast. Intimately designed by the architect for his young active family, the residence reflects their dynamic outdoor lifestyle and love of the water. With easy access to the river, the house draws towards the southern waterfront while maintaining a playful but private street façade.

After Dark Program – Three nights of late Thursdays where both galleries stay open from 5.00pm – 7.30pm with talks, drinks and music

Thursday 4 July
Joint Launch Event
6.00pm Exhibition Talk: John Gollings discusses Learning from Surfers Paradise – the making of a 40 year project with original collaborator Architect Tony Styant-Browne and Curator Virginia Rigney. Afterwards Las Vegas Studio curator Martino Stierli and Hilar Stadler of Museum im Bellpark introduce their exhibition.

Thursday 18 July
Forgotten Women in Architecture
6.00pm In 1991, Denise Scott Brown was passed over when only her collaborator and partner, Robert Venturi was awarded architecture’s highest honour, The Pritzker Architecture Prize. Join a discussion led by Naomi Stead of the University of Queensland School of Architecture and Amy Degenhart, Australian Institute of Architects, about the campaign to redress this and the current state of women in architecture. Presented in collaboration with Archiparlour

Thursday 1 August
Sign City
6.00pm Surfers Paradise was once a place of exuberant night time signage. Peter Hall, Head of Design at Queensland College of Art, leads a conversation with Danielle Kelly, Director of the Neon Sign Museum Las Vegas (via Skype) and Jack Bryce, Gold Coast City Council, and speakers from local signage and design industry about the history and potential future directions of signage for Surfers Paradise. Presented in partnership with DIAQ Gold Coast.

Dattime Event
Wednesday 31 July
Since 1973: Remembering Paradise
11.00am Join us for a special morning tea and share your memories of the city over the past four decades with some well-known Gold Coast identities.
RSVP: 5588 4000 or gallery@theartscentregc.com.au

School Partnership Project Exhibiting
5 – 11 August I The Studio TACGC
Broadbeach Primary School is located right near the heart of Surfers Paradise and their Gifted and Talented students will present works in The Arts Centre Studio space as part of a special Cultural Mapping project of their own, based on their reading of the exhibitions and their own understanding of their city.

Location: 135 Bundall Road, Surfers Paradise Qld 4217, Australia