Warrnambool Art Gallery

Introduction

Warrnambool Art Gallery (‘the Gallery”) is home to a collection of visual material representing colonial Australia to current art practice. The Gallery is a public facility operated by the Warrnambool City Council and is suitably positioned adjacent the City’s Civic Centre and within the city’s cultural precinct.

The Gallery aims to provide a visual art resource for the Warrnambool and regional community and its visitors by actively collecting, preserving and presenting works of art. The continued development of the Gallery’s Collection, and a program of temporary exhibitions and public events, encourages creative endeavour and provides opportunity for engagement between its audience, the artists and the objects they create.

The Gallery is a memorial to Sir Fletcher Jones. The Family of Fletcher & Rena Jones through the FJ Foundation has been an ongoing major benefactor since the early 1970s, providing considerable financial assistance with the acquisition of artworks for the Gallery’s Collection.

Gallery Collection

The Gallery has a permanent collection of over 1,600 works of art. Major areas include European Salon painting from c1880s, Melbourne Modernism of the 1930s to 1950s, artworks investigating Tower Hill , Colonial landscapes, Australian printmaking post 1970, and images of the Warrnambool region and the Shipwreck Coast.

Exhibition Spaces

A selection of works of art from the Gallery’s Collection is displayed in the two Permanent Collection spaces. The Gallery also presents an annual program of over thirty exhibitions within the three temporary exhibition spaces.

The Alan Lane Community Gallery is the first space encountered by visitors to the Gallery, and is a multi-function exhibition and community access space. This space is a focal point for local and regional arts activity, presenting an annual program of approximately sixteen exhibitions and numerous public program and community events. It provides display opportunities for emerging artists, community groups and agencies, art of the local region and pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions.

The Temporary Exhibition space allows the Gallery to host significant touring exhibitions, works by established artists, and exhibitions developed from the Gallery’s permanent collection. Six to seven exhibitions are held in this space annually. Curatorial staff work in partnership with artists and other institutions to present exhibitions to the community.

The George Lance Gallery is an intimate space that lends itself to smaller scale exhibitions. Primarily, exhibitions are hosted by the Gallery and run for approximately six to eight weeks. Exhibitions presented in this space aim to provide opportunities for project-based exhibits by artists, groups, institutions or exhibition touring bodies and works sourced from the Gallery’s Collection or other collections.

Affiliations

The Gallery is a member of the following associations:

• Public Galleries Association of Victoria
• Museums Australia (Victoria)
• Australasian Registrars Committee
• Collections Australian Network
• National Association for the Visual Arts
• Art Education Victoria Inc.
• Print Council of Australia
• Museum Shops Association of Australia
• Cultural Development Network for the South West
• Visual Arts and Design Network.

Access

Entry to the Gallery is free. The Gallery is open all year (except Christmas Day and Good Friday). Opening hours for the Gallery are Monday to Friday 10:00am to 5:00pm, Saturday, Sunday and Public Holidays noon to 5:00pm.

Access to the Collection is further realised through a rotating exhibition program, administering research requests, the Gallery’s Education Services and the Friends of the Gallery’s public program.

Community Involvement

The Gallery engages with its community in a variety of ways, from its prime physical location to its comprehensive and diverse program of public exhibitions, programs and events that enrich the cultural life of Warrnambool and the region.

The Gallery initiates regular public programs including exhibition launches, floor talks, and workshops that relate to aspects of the Gallery’s operations and are offered to the Friends of the Gallery and the wider community.