It’s the most visited gallery in Victoria. It has forty venues across Melbourne, though you have to be on time to catch the exhibitions. It exhibits an innovative mix of visual art and poetry. It is the Moving Galleries project on Melbourne’s Connex trains. Late on a Monday morning I caught a train with Jessie Doring, Moving Galleries’ Project Manager, and Justin Clemens, poet, to see the work and find out more about this inspiring project.
Most regular Melbourne commuters will have seen the Moving Galleries posters at some point over the last couple of years, though you may not be aware of the scope of the project. Each Moving Galleries exhibit is displayed in the form of an A2 decal, just like the public information or commercial advertising posters already found on trains and trams. Eighteen different decals display poems by Victorian writers and a further eighteen decals display photographs of recent Melbourne art installations. These thirty-six separate works are displayed on the interior walls of each of the Moving Galleries trains. “Forty trains have the exhibition on them at the moment,” explained Doring, “that’s just over a third of Melbourne trains. So Moving Galleries has more visitors than the National Gallery of Victoria.” We caught the Glen Waverley train and, with the train being relatively empty at that time of the morning, we were free to browse up and down the carriages – for us it really was a moving art gallery.
So how did Moving Galleries get started? Doring replied, “It was an initiative of the Committee for Melbourne’s Future Focus Group, which is a two year program where small groups of emerging leaders create and implement projects that will have a lasting impact and benefit, improving the liveability of Melbourne. There was a young lawyer called Stuart Weir, now a partner at AAR Lawyers, who was in the Future Focus Group, and he suggested the idea of artwork on the trains or the platforms – they do it London, they do it in Hong Kong, we’re meant to be the cultural capital of Australia so why don’t we have something like that? That was in 2005. At the same time there was a young woman called Lia Hills, a writer and poet, and she had an idea, separately, why don’t we have poetry on the trains? She approached Connex at about the same time. So Stuart was thinking artwork, Lia was thinking poetry, and it all came together in a happy marriage.”
Since then the Moving Galleries has become a permanent fixture on Melbourne trains. “We do two exhibitions a year, and each exhibition is up for six months. If you travel regularly over that period you should have encountered one of our trains. And we know that there are quite a few thousand people out there who will deliberately try and look for it. One of the biggest pullers is that it’s refreshing. It’s better than advertising. Many people much prefer it.”
While we were talking we came across Justin Clemens’ poem ‘Hurt Sonnet’. I asked him how it felt to see his work up on the wall of a busy commuter train. “What can I say? It’s a total disgrace! Why wasn’t I rejected like every other time!” he laughs. Joking aside, Clemens says that the immediacy of Moving Galleries has been a new and exciting experience. “I’ve had emails from people, ‘I’ve just been on the train, saw your work’. Normally you’d get nothing back. It’s like a very small hobby. If you write poetry generally no one ever reads it. The only people who read my poems are other poets, who are also in the same situation. So this is the first time I’ve had emails about my poems. It’s actually out there and right in front of you. It seems very old-fashioned, it’s on a train and it’s printed word, but it has a contemporary immediacy like blogging, which you don’t normally get in poetry. It’s the 21st Century meets the 19th. It’s steampunk!”
During the trip we came across a perhaps typical commuter, Fred Nguyen, bio-medical scientist and occasional poetry reader. I asked him if he had seen the Moving Galleries exhibits. “I’ve seen the poems, or my friends see them, and we have a chat about them, or often I’ll chat to my girlfriend about them when we’re on the train. I think they’re a really good conversation starter.”
That’s the kind of effect Doring is pleased that Moving Galleries is having. “Trying to get people to read poetry is a big part of it,” she agrees. “When people see poetry in a less academic manner, like on the train, hopefully they’ll consider going on and finding more for themselves.” Does Moving Galleries encourage amateur writers to submit their work?
“The balance between amateur and professional writers has changed from exhibition to exhibition. A lot of the first exhibition came from within the poetry community. Now it’d be about a third novice poets. We received over a thousand submissions from writers and the public across Victoria. From those we have a panel of four who chose twenty-three for the Transformation exhibition, so it’s a massive job.”
Of course poetry is just one half of the Moving Galleries exhibition. The other half consists of photographs of recent Melbourne installation art. By their very nature art installations are temporary, and none of the installations exhibited by Moving Galleries physically exist now. What is left behind is the photographic record of each work. The challenge is to express the original work in a compelling way in its new form as a decal on a train. “The images have to stand on their own. All of this work is ephemeral. It just isn’t there anymore, so the image itself stands in for the original work. So you’ve got a synthesis of two works – the original artwork itself and the photograph of the artwork.” For this reason the photographer of each work is credited along with the original artist.
Later on in the day we caught up with Robbie Rowlands, whose work ‘The Upholsterer’ features in the current Moving Galleries exhibition. Some of Rowlands’ recent work involves converting condemned buildings into huge temporary sculptures before the bulldozers wipe the site clean, leaving only images behind. “The thing is, that place doesn’t exist anymore. It was demolished a week after we did it. So really all you’re left with is the photograph.” Nonetheless, he is very comfortable with the idea of a mass audience seeing his work through reproduction. “All the famous artworks I’ve seen are reproductions. We very rarely see the original. So I don’t mind that sort of format. I know it’s great to get people there physically, but I don’t see it as less sensational as an image.”
Rowlands sees a great deal of significance in the life cycle of his works, from demolition site, to image on the internet or decal on a train. “’Ephemeral’ associates with the idea of death: when we lose the person, does that mean we lose everything? The reality is we don’t, we’ve got images, we’ve got conversations we remember, we’ve got family history and so on. So this artwork, in a similar way, is continuing in that sort of process.”
Rowlands is passionate about the way Moving Galleries can demystify art for people. “I have friends who are not artists look at my work and go ‘I don’t know what to say about this, I don’t know how you talk about art’, and I think ‘No this is wrong. I want to hear what you think. That version of what that work is, is right’. I do think we’ve done a bad job of steering people the wrong way about art.”
Doring agrees that making art a normal part of people’s lives is a central aim of Moving Galleries. “By growing interest in art you’re introducing the idea that art isn’t something that’s scary. Public transport is one means to reach people, to try and pique Melbourne’s interest in art. Hopefully they’ll see this and go and buy a book. Or they’ll see this and go and visit the Laneways Project. Or say ‘let’s go and see what’s on at the National Gallery’.”
So what’s down the line for Moving Galleries? Broadening awareness of the project is a key goal. Moving Galleries has always featured a website, www.movinggalleries.org.au, where commuters can vote for their favorite exhibit, but more can be done. “We can use audio to announce to people ‘hey you’re on a Moving Gallery, don’t forget to vote’. I’d like to see decals on the floor to say that you’re now in a gallery. Make it a bit more noticeable.” As Doring talks about the possibilities her enthusiasm is evident. “My wish is to get it onto, say, eighty trains. Make it more accessible by having voting on SMS. Have more people, when they walk on, aware of it. Bit by bit people are realizing it’s there, but I think if people are pointed to it that will grow more and more interest. And possibly go out onto the platforms as well. Extend it to sculpture, say, on the platforms. They do it in London, we can do it here. “
With a busy exhibition schedule, and poets and artists alike clamoring for the chance to exhibit, expect Moving Galleries to be moving Melburnians for a long time to come.
– Jonathan Wicken