Still Crazy After All These Years

The Age

Wednesday October 17, 2007

Katherine Kizilos

St Kilda's snow-white mansion has had many lives, not all of them popular with the locals, writes Katherine Kizilos.

THE history of Linden, the art gallery St Kilda calls its own, encompasses a boarding house, a ghost, pigs and council politics. Now in its 21st year, the gallery is an established institution but it was once a marginal place, future uncertain.

Today the gracious Victorian mansion in Acland Street supports emerging artists, houses contemporary art shows and hosts an annual open postcard competition. The council acquired the building - which is in the leafy section of Acland Street between the cafe strip and Fitzroy Street - in mid 1984 with the idea of using the place to support local artists.

In those days St Kilda was cheaper and seedier; artists could afford to live there. It is often argued, alas, that the attention lavished on St Kilda by its resident artists is one reason they have had to move. As St Kilda has become more fashionable the artists have left one by one, pushed out by high rents and the dearth of affordable studio space.

In hindsight, the council's decision to purchase the grand old house looks inspired, but at the time it had its detractors. The public housing lobby, for instance, was concerned about the fate of five elderly boarding house tenants who lived in the building (alternative digs were found for them), while according to Linden's director, Giacomina Pradolin, one former councillor who was a land valuer believed the $345,000 purchase price was $75,000 too much.

Artist Michael Vale, who was the council's acquisitions officer when Linden was purchased, also served as the acting coordinator of Linden between 1985 and 1987. He has written of how Linden's "boarding-house interior featured a chaotic arrangement of cheap wardrobes and beds, frayed terry-towelling quilts, and wall colours that were possibly inspired by a packet of Fruit Tingles".

He says that in the gallery's early days "people would often ring during exhibition openings to book holiday accommodation. Or they'd just wander in off the street to tell you about what it was like when Aunty lived there. A friend who grew up in the flats next door told me that the family who ran it in the '60s kept pigs at the back, fattening them up for local restaurants."

Vale now teaches in the painting departments at Monash and RMIT and is one of eight contemporary artists invited to contribute to Linden's

21st anniversary show, This Crazy Love. Curator Jan Duffy says that when she was putting the exhibition together "I thought about my experience here, and the different shows . . . and I started to think about the relationship between artists and the gallery". Although artists, gallery owners and dealers often complain about each other, she realised that "we are stuck together with this obsessive relationship to each other and to art". Later, she reflects that like love, "art keeps you going".

All of the exhibiting artists have a history with the gallery. Megan Keating and Robert McHaffie both had their first solo exhibitions at Linden.

Artist Elizabeth Presa's installation is concerned with domestic silk production and incorporates quotes from Jacques Derrida's boyhood memoir, A Silkworm of One's Own. One of the elements is an antique cabinet drawer filled with silkworm eggs and cocoons which are expected to hatch during the show. This means Presa must visit them daily with sacks of mulberry leaves so that the silkworms don't die for art's sake.

Whenever Presa exhibits at Linden she tries to "make a reference to the internal space". "It's one of the most beautiful places to exhibit in Melbourne. It makes such a strong statement. It's quite a poetic presence. I always allow myself to be affected by that."

She says that for a previous show at Linden she brought in her lounge-room furniture - including a bookcase and a grand piano - and hundreds of books. The pages of the books had been painstakingly folded and fanned open and each volume was then dipped in beeswax. "They looked like fungus or plant life," she recalls. "The aroma filled the downstairs area. Bees would keep flying in, attracted by the aroma."

Her installations demonstrate one way in which Linden can differ from commercial galleries; it encourages its artists to work in an experimental way. At the same time, Linden is prepared to sell the works on display, if appropriate, collecting a 10 per cent handling fee. Pradolin, who has been the director of Linden for about a year, says for many visitors - tourists to St Kilda visiting the beach, say, or Luna Park - Linden might be their first visit to a contemporary art gallery. And some of them are quite prepared to buy what they like.

She stresses, however, that the venue's primary function is not to make money but to support artists, who are paid $1000 for contributing to an exhibition. Although the building is owned and maintained by the City of Port Phillip, the centre is run independently. It receives most of its funding from the council and is backed by institutions such as Melbourne Airport which sponsors the emerging artists program, as well as receiving a smaller amount from the State Government. Linden also supports indigenous artists through its annual NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander Day of Celebration) show. Altogether, up to 24 shows are held at the gallery each year. Linden also has four studios which it plans to offer rent-free to artists on a long-term basis. Linden 2, a white cube that will allow larger works to be exhibited, is planned for the St Kilda triangle site and is expected to open in 2010.

Pradolin describes Linden as a "physical embodiment of St Kilda's artistic sensibility". There is an irony here. Linden, which continues to support art for its own sake, has also contributed to St Kilda's recent respectability and therefore the decline of its artist population.

Which brings us to Linden's ghost. According to journalist Ashley Crawford, a former caretaker at Linden "often recounted how at precisely 8pm every night his two German shepherd guard dogs would rouse themselves growling, the hair along their spines bristling. The security officer couldn't see anything, but that doesn't mean something wasn't there." The identity of the ghost is unknown: could it be a painter still grieving because he is no longer able to work close to the beach?

This Crazy Love at Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, 26 Acland Street, St Kilda, until November 11. Gallery open 1pm to 6pm, Tuesday to Sunday.

LINK

lindenarts.org

© 2007 The Age

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