By Matilda Boseley
After four years of struggling, the Australian National Veteran Art Museum has, this Wednesday, secured a home.
Independent senator Derryn Hinch told ANVAM chairman Mark Johnston on Wednesday’s Channel 7 News broadcast that that the unoccupied war repatriations building “will be sold by the federal government to the state government, who will lease it back to you for a peppercorn rent, and it’s your forever.” This rent could be as low as a dollar a year, Johnston said.
Sitting just outside the Victorian Barracks, the gallery will showcase veteran art. The goal of the space: to provide veterans with support for mental health issues associated with combat by creating a community and providing services such as art therapy.
The National Veteran Art Museum will find a home at 310 St Kilda Road. Now unoccupied, the building was used as an out-patient hospital since WW1.
After this surprise announcement Johnston said: “It’s a little bit surreal. We have been going at it so long now, nearly 4 years.”
The gallery (yellow) will be located just outside the walls of the Victoria Barracks (red). SOURCE: Department of Defence
The road to acquiring the building has been a long one. After the federal government failed to help them ANVAM created a chang.org petition, and contacted the state government to buy the land.
However, as recently as Sunday this looked grim. “They had just gone quiet,” Johnston said. ANVAM had no assurances that once the block was bought it would be available to them. “They could [have turned] it into a new office block.”
Johnston, however, made a breakthrough when he coincidentally met Derryn Hinch at a bar in Canberra. “I was having a drink one night at the bar… Derryn walked in and I said to my mate ‘I’m going to grab him'”.
Johnston said when Hinch found out about the building he was “gob-smacked”. Hinch took it on as a pet project and got the negotiations pushed through within a number of weeks.
ANVAM believes that this gallery will help fight the mental illness crisis gripping the veteran community. “Being a cultural institution was a means to an
end, the end is the wellbeing of ex- serving members and their families,” Johnston said.
Veteran suicide rates are significantly higher than in the civilian population and Johnston believes this is due to the reactionary not preventative approach to mental illness by the defence force.
“The federal government is so caught up in creating places like veteran suicide prevention centres… no-one wants to go there. It does my head in that they think that would work. Instead [the gallery] will be a place of celebration and vitality.”
ANVAM’s vision for the building includes multiple galleries and spaces for art therapy. It will host exhibitions which emphasise community engagement. “There will be opportunities to try and get collaborative exhibitions with other countries. Either allies… or former enemies.”
The building, empty for decades, has fallen into serious disrepair and will need millions in restorations. Funding for the project will likely be split between the federal and state governments and philanthropic societies.
Johnston says the gallery is still several years away. “I’d say at best two years from now.”
A collection of art work from ANVAM’s current exhibition “A March to Art: Identity“, being held at SPACE@Collins until the 25th of April.
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