AGWA 40 – Celebrating the anniversary of AGWA’s 1979 Brutalist building.
Opened on 2 October 1979 by then Premier Charles Court, the new Art Gallery of WA building was a dramatic example of late Brutalist architecture designed by Polish born Charles Sierakowski.
This exhibition opens out the many layers of the history of the building’s development featuring images of the building in construction and its early days, along with ephemera such as building models, plans, diagrams and drawings, and early promotional brochures about the structure and its place in the Cultural Centre (now undergoing its biggest development since 1979 with the WA Museum project).
The iconic structure marked the end of a 10 year building boom and had been dreamt of for years before that by Gallery Director Frank Norton, whose own international researches and design thinking also fed the building’s final form.
PUBLICATION
Delivering a concise overview of the new gallery project and its place within the Cultural Centre. Including a biographical sketch of Charles Sierakowski, a factual history of the building’s construction, how gallery spaces were conceived, how they have changed over time, how various exhibitions have utilised them, how directors, curators and exhibition designers have engaged with them. To local architectural significance and context, as well as the building’s inspiration, influence and legacy.
Contributing authors include, AGWA Curators; Robert Cook, Melissa Harpley and Dunja Rmandic. As well as essays from Patrick Ford, Annette Condello, Merindah Bairnsfather-Scott, Noel Nannup and Andrew Murray.
$32.95, available from the AGWA Shop.
GUIDED TOURS
Perth Brutal: Dreaming in Concrete
2-3pm, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays
Guided tours will examine Brutalist features of the building and how they fit into the thinking that underpins its design. A viewing of early images and drawings of the building will conclude the tour.