Moving from a capital city to a regional centre sounds like a green change, but Holly Arden – who took up the role of Director of Townsville City Galleries (Perc Tucker Regional Gallery and Pinnacles Gallery) late last year – is excited by the possibilities. ‘It’s very beautiful, but it’s also very unusual,’ she says.
In tourism terms Townsville can be described as a gateway to North Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef. It is also a big military town, and has one of Australia’s largest First Nations communities. So how does one step into that dynamic, and grow it forward?
ArtsHub spoke with Arden during a recent visit, on the occasion of the Eastern Threads exhibition.
Why Townsville, and why Townsville now?
Arden had spent time in Northern Queensland, especially in the Far North around Cairns, so when the opportunity of a permanent move came up, she was already geared towards the idea.
‘We talk about the landscape a lot in our work as arts practitioners, and the way that it completely envelops you, like this very warm, and sometimes sweaty, hug. It’s this ever-present feeling and the impact that has on artists, and day-to-day life, is very seductive. And then this role came up, and I was quite magnetically attracted to it.
‘But being here for a few months, I now know how much I don’t know. It has been a career changing – and life changing – opportunity,’ Arden adds.
The Townsville community and gallery collection has a strong focus on Torres Strait Island artists.
‘When I arrived in Australia from Scotland, I was nearly 16, and I distinctly remember the beginning of school and learning about the concept of terra nullius and Eddie Koiki Mabo. And then, coming here, I get to work with (his daughter) Gail Mabo. First to see her artworks in our collection, and then to work with her on a curatorial project, has been really illuminating.’
A proportion of the City of Townsville Art Collection – around 80 works – are from the Torres Strait Islands.
From a university gallery to a regional gallery
Arden has moved to Townsville after years of experience in the university gallery sector, originally in Melbourne and more recently in Brisbane at University of Queensland (UQ) Art Museum. Reflecting on that shift from a teaching institution to a public space, Arden tells ArtsHub: ‘Something that’s really intrinsic to my practice is audience engagement, and thinking about who are the publics for art. They always say in public forums that “we’re in the business of art”. But, first and foremost, we’re in the business of people.’
Arden says that it took a long time to even ‘skim the surface’ of who the communities were patronising the UQ Art Museum, and how best to serve their needs, and broaden intellectual and cultural discourse.
‘I think, in the arts, we often assume we know the audiences that we must serve. But audiences are of course so diverse; there is obviously still no tool that we can use to engage with an audience and find out exactly what they want, and what do they need from us? It’s sort of a million-dollar question.’
Arden says that, while galleries can glean baseline data from surveys, the best way to know an audience is to spend time in the space.
‘In terms of the lessons, it is taking that time to think, reflect and talk to people, and start to really know the community. A lot of directors are asked what their vision is, and they come into a job with guns blazing. I don’t necessarily agree with that approach. I think that the vision can come after you’ve spent time in thoughtful communications with the people of that particular place.’
What’s the role of education access?
After six and a half years at the University of Queensland, Arden concludes that it’s ‘a careful dance’ to get education and access right in a gallery environment.
She says: ‘The history of education in the Western world – and this particularly applies to large groups of people and institutions, like galleries and universities and libraries – has been about talking down to people. “We are going to educate you now” – but you have to listen.
‘It’s not a cookie cutter approach, by any means. A lot of the work that we were doing at the UQ Art Museum – and this is something that I will start to think about how it may work here – is cultural mediation with peers as intermediaries between the art and the public. So it becomes far less scary for someone to come into the gallery.’
Arden explains that this may look like involving someone who is the same age or someone who is not from an arts background.
‘So there are no tours, there’s no “sit down, I’m going to tell you about this work”. It’s a sort of chat between people. It also helps to minimise that very scary barrier of coming into a building. And then people can leave knowing that they have something, and that they have some agency as well.’
Understanding the role of a regional gallery director
Arden’s role bridges two gallery spaces – the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, located in a heritage building downtown, and Pinnacles Gallery at Riverway, in a purpose-built space about half an hour from the CBD – as well as managing the city’s biennial public art event Ephemera, Townsville’s Street Art Trail and The Percivals portraiture prize.
‘If the enthusiasm of the crowds that come to our openings is anything to go by, then it’s a pretty rich level of local engagement… and it’s a community that’s passionate about what’s happening in their city,’ she says.
‘The Percivals is another example of Townsville getting behind the gallery. We close the street off for a party, and thousands of people come. It’s massive.
‘I don’t think city arts professionals really understand the full nuance of the role that regional gallery directors play,’ Arden adds.
‘I think I expected to have more [conventional] challenges; instead there are other ones that I am beginning to dip my toe into, in terms of engagement with our Townsville community. I am trying to spend a portion of my working week sitting at the front desk observing.’
How can you know your audience if you don’t see how they’re responding?
Holly Arden
Arden says, ‘[There is] a real vibrancy, and people really love coming in. But I am keen to think about the challenge of spaces and opportunity here in Townsville. We have a lot of leading practitioners here, and I believe that we need to grow our infrastructure, or our ecosystem of spaces here.’
Last year, James Cook University ceased offering its arts courses in Townsville and Cairns. TAFE, however, continues to offer courses in visual arts. The offerings by the Council galleries are complemented by Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts and The Drill Hall Studio.
‘There’s a lot of different practices that need space to develop. So that is a big challenge – the lack of space and coming to understand our purpose and the kinds of artists that we can work with, and we can serve, and then those who are suited to working in another kind of environment,’ Arden tells ArtsHub.
‘The other more intellectual question for me is: how do we think about our regional location without being regionalist,’ she says. ‘Having been in the position of being metro-based, and saying, “Oh this is what the regions need”, the essence of that gesture is a kind of paternalism, however generous it is.
‘What we need to do in the regions is to go, “Hey, we’ve got some incredible work that you need to see and we can manage that flowback effect,’ she says.
The challenges of that T word: tourism
Townsville is big tourist town, and yet the tourism industry has its own language and its own systems of information flows, operators and timelines. For many regional galleries this can be difficult to penetrate.
‘There are all these very cold people down in Melbourne! We don’t want them to just come here and then go to the Barrier Reef, but to pause and absorb what the city has to offer from a cultural point of view,’ says Arden.
‘We’ve got an incredible Civic Theatre here. We’ve got Dancenorth, and we’ve got all these people doing really cool things – Pink even chose Townsville as her only regional venue! It’s about us coming together as a community and saying, “Hey, this is what we can bring to the table as a cohesive unit.”’
Next year, the gallery will again present its core program, Ephemera. ‘I’m doing a grant proposal at the moment, so I’ve been looking at numbers. The last Ephemera brought in 250,000 people over 16 days and had an economic impact of tens of millions. People even drive from Mount Isa – and that’s an eight-hour drive!’ she says.
‘This is where the gallery really needs to start building its events into a stay for the weekend, and making it an extended cultural city experience.’
Arden adds: ‘And really building the gallery as a key destination for this region – putting it on the map and making people take notice – and the impact that has, in turn, to give artists great opportunity to develop and show their work.’
What’s the five-year vision?
Looking ahead five years, Arden has some aspirations for the gallery: ‘I think it would still be a picture of growth, in terms of the fabric of what we’re able to offer as a community and audiences coming together.’
‘[Townsville City Council] is really supportive, and the mayor is a regular at our openings and a couple of councillors sit on our art acquisitions and working group – they also have their own practices in the performing arts, so there is a lot of passion for what we are doing,’ she says.
Since ArtsHub’s visit to Townsville, local elections have been held. Incumbent mayor Jenny Hill was defeated, after 12 years in the role, by independent candidate Troy Thompson.
Ahead of those elections, Arden told ArtsHub that, regardless of the outcome, ‘The city’s corporate plan is about growing lifestyle for the city, which recognises the importance of what the gallery is doing in supporting that larger vision.
‘I wouldn’t have taken the job if I didn’t feel very positively about the way that the Council feels towards the arts,’ she adds.
Advice for your younger self and colleagues?
Arden says that fostering professional equality is ‘something very close to my heart’.
She continues: ‘We know that the arts can be an incredibly difficult place to work, and my career has been affected by some difficult leaders. I feel that there is a lot of female violence still happening in the arts.
‘I’ve made a personal commitment to break that cycle of toxic behaviour, and I think more people need to be doing the same. I’m trying to protect staff as much as I can. There’s no place for poor, ego-driven behaviour.’
Arden continues, ‘I don’t know if there’s still a sense of women feeling like they have to be equal with men, therefore keeping other women down – and I’m definitely creeping into that older age bracket – but I say to my staff – male and female, non-binary, it doesn’t matter – that it’s important to really know their worth and to not get sucked into doing endless volunteer hours for crap pay.
This is an industry where our capital is passion. And that’s what keeps us running.
Holly Arden
‘A couple of critical times across my career I’ve gone, “Is my passion enough to keep this going?” Sometimes the answer has been “no”. But then, what else would I do? And what else would give me the same highs? There’s nothing.’
Moving regionally, is there a better balance?
Unfortunately not, says Arden. ‘As a regional gallery director you’re on all the time and, after just a few months into this job, I’m probably more tired now than I’ve ever been.
‘We’ve had one threat of natural disaster since I arrived, one actual natural emergency – where we had to demount all the exhibitions within about three days and get them into emergency storage. And then we had no power in Townsville for three days, and it was 36 degrees and 85% humidity. Everyone was very emotional.’
Natural disasters aside, Arden says she is also tired ‘because I’m just really passionate about the possibilities and trying to get all my priorities in order, so I can go “what’s next? Let’s do it”.’
Arden is clearly pumped. And it is also clear that this environment would have a palpable impact on anyone’s state of mind. She concludes: ‘From green sea turtles breeding all along this coastline to Pink performing here… I feel like the metro cities would make a big deal of these things – but it’s just what this place is, this incredibly layered offering.’
More about Holly Arden
Dr Holly Arden was appointed by Townsville City Council in November 2023. Prior to the move she was Interim Director and Associate Director at UQ Art Museum (2018-22) and an Affiliate Lecturer in the School of Communication and Arts at UQ, where she taught Art History.
Prior to Brisbane, Arden was Course Convenor and Lecturer in Art History, Theory and Design at Monash University (2010 – 2014) and a Teaching Associate at RMIT (2011 – 2014).
Arden holds a PhD in Art History and Theory from Monash University, Melbourne.
The writer travelled as a guest of Townsville City Council.
