Current research into public and private art collecting and collections has identified how informed either the individual collector or institution must be in relation to broad based understandings and assertions about contemporary visual arts practices in Australia. Collections are accumulative material evidence that assist us to know and understand the ever-changing dynamic that is Australian culture. This curatorial project investigated the dynamics of how a collection is formed over several decades where the only determinate appears to be the taste of the collector.
Curated by Craig Douglas.
Accounting for the Collector: the Brian Tucker Collection was a collaborative exhibition project between Brian Tucker, a Brisbane based collector of contemporary Australian visual arts, Logan Art Gallery Redcliffe City Gallery public and the Queensland College of Art Griffith University. The project was across 2 sites – Redcliffe City Gallery showing a curated selection of Tucker’s Indigenous collection, while Logan Art Gallery exhibited a selection from Tucker’s Australian landscape, flora and fauna collection. This two-site exhibition project also afforded an opportunity for QCA research students to work as assistant curators to the project working with municipal public art gallery staff and the Project director on a best practice exemplar of action (curation) research. The various South-East Queensland audiences who visited each public gallery were able to explore the personal taste and vision of a private collector and by association his understanding of Australian contemporary art practice.
The project offered an opportunity to explore curatorial practice and at the same time initiate neophite researchers into the protocols of curating by working with municipal public galleries, a private collector and an important collection of Australian contemporary art to curate two public exhibitions. This was also a significant project in that it allowed for a number of stories about Australian visual art and culture to be explored and presented to a diverse audience. Finally the Redcliffe City Gallery exhibition (component of the project) considered and explored, through tucker’s collecting rationale, the diverse range of Central Desert and Northern Territory Indigenous contemporary visual arts practice.