A 16-hectare arts and environmental precinct has opened in Halls Gap, Victoria, featuring Australia's first National Centre for Environmental Art (NCEA), alongside the Gariwerd/Grampians Endemic Botanic Garden and Jallukar Native Grasslands.
A Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony, delivered by Paul Kelly of the Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, Uncle Ron Marks of the Gadjin Land Council Aboriginal Corporation and Tya Lovett of the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, marked the official opening of the precinct on 5 July.
The Where Art Meets Nature (WAMA) precinct is designed to be a place that highlights and celebrates the intersection between art, science and nature. It features an arts centre building, designed by MvS Architects and Taut Architects, which includes a climate-controlled art gallery, a cafe, a retail space and a multipurpose room for workshops, events and educational sessions.
Gallery exhibitions will showcase works that reflect, explore or are inspired by nature and the environment. The NCEA's inaugural exhibition, End and Being by Western Australian artist Jacobus Capone, confronts planetary warming through a documented performance on Europe's Bossons Glacier. According to the WAMA Foundation, the work presents a powerful contrast to the recent devastating bushfires in Gariwerd/Grampians National Park, highlighting the global scale of the climate crisis.
With a strong focus on the environment, landscape design was a central feature of the precinct. Delivered by Tract, it includes restored native bushland, gathering spaces and pathways, alongside the existing Gariwerd/Grampians Endemic Botanic Garden and Jallukar Native Grasslands.
In an earlier article revealing the project, director of MvS Architects Jan van Schaik stated, "the building is designed to tie in with the landscape in which it is situated […] the design techniques used give the sense that the landscape is drawn inside the building. It's part of the mechanism of the landscape, like an outdoor room."
