JACQUI Hemsley finds it hard to contain her excitement when she talks about MAMA.

Now the secret is out of the bag about the name of the redevelopment of the former Albury Regional Art Gallery, Jacqui wants to share as much as she can about the new building and its potential to unleash a revolution in the way the arts will be seen, managed and ultimately, enjoyed by Border residents and visitors alike.

For the past five years, Jacqui has been Albury Council’s group leader for cultural services.

While overseeing the operation of assets including the Library Museum, she has had another eye on the development of what she describes as a “juggernaut”, the $10.5 million MAMA.

“It has been my job to convince the council and the public that an art institution would be beneficial; that it had to happen,” she said.

“We had an historic building that was no longer meeting customer expectations, we needed this.

“We live in a city of growth, a city that has pretty high economic goals and aspirations and this is part of it; it’s part of that foundation base, like your spiritual, like your sport, culture facilities, amenities, the quality of your pathways, it all fits.”

Jacqui says customer expectations of a city’s amenities are as high as those they have for any other commercial service.

“I like to use the analogy that you don’t just go to a daggy old high street any more, with a poorly displayed shop and appalling customer service,” she said.

“People want the amenities; they want the mix of good quality shopping, they want car parking; it’s the same with art galleries and libraries. 

“Consumer expectation is a lot higher so at the very least you need to be able to provide that, otherwise they are not going to engage with you.”

Jacqui singles out former Albury general manager Les Tomich and director James Jenkins for praise for their long-term support of the project.

“They listened. It was Les Tomich’s absolute ambition to fully utilise QEII Square.

“When we received $3.5 million from the Regional Development Australia Fund it became more than a dream, it allowed the development of a master plan.

“It’s been amazing, a juggernaut. So many other local governments aren’t ambitious. This council values this, it values this project, it values public art.”

Jacqui says she can’t think of any other large regional gallery that has the advantage of being located in the centre of a city’s CBD and entertainment precinct, as will be the case with MAMA’s expected opening in September.

“The art by accident component of this facility is incredible; we have the technology to evaluate the audience, the sensors to determine how they access the building,” she said.

“But the gallery is not the end of it, it is the start.”

Six public art spots will be curated ahead of MAMA’s opening. There will be four multimedia spots and nine screens projecting into QEII Square, with programmed LED lighting and soundscapes.

Four times a year, different vinyls, similar to the decals that now adorn the city’s utility boxes will be rotated in QEII Square.

Alongside specially commissioned public art pieces and others that will be on loan to the city, together with sculpture, lighting and the MAMA restaurant, Jacqui wants Albury’s most coveted piece of open public space to be a year-round destination, day and night, for residents and visitors.

“That will then link to the Library Museum, it will have its path, providing another opportunity into that building instead of the Kiewa and Swift street access,” she said.

“As a community you can use it a lot more; you can have your lunch there; when you’re waiting for the bus it’s a great experience rather than a ‘I have to’ experience; you can do your shopping and you can come into the square and enjoy it and you can enjoy it for a lot longer.”

BEFORE arriving in Albury, Jacqui had been director at the La Trobe Regional Gallery in Gippsland, the director of the Southland Museum and Art Gallery at Invercargill in New Zealand and the director at Broken Hill Art Gallery.

Having completed a redevelopment at Broken Hill, she sought change in Southland’s museum program after finishing her master’s degree.

“I felt that visual arts was getting very tight and didn’t allow too much engagement, in Australia particularly because it’s a very narrow field and very categorised. In the museum world it seemed more exciting,” she said.

“New Zealand was great. They do things incredibly well in the way they incorporate Maori culture and encourage their natural history.

“New Zealand has more museums per head of population than anywhere else in the world; it was an amazing experience.”

Located in the far south of the South Island, Invercargill may not have been the most popular place in New Zealand but it had a museum with a huge number of objects and an impressive visual art collection.

When the position in Albury came up she embraced the challenge of incorporating museums and galleries in the one role.

“It’s been fantastic to be able to work and learn with all the different sectors,” she said.

“In the future, place making, place creation and that creation of cultural identity will be very important.

“It will be that next step of creating an awareness nationally, that our region is a culturally exciting, vibrant and engaging, sustainable city.”

MAMA will be different from the regional art gallery that Jacqui admits has failed to engage Border residents outside a small core of supporters.

“Forty per cent of our visitors before the gallery closed were visitors and tourists because they wanted a cultural experience,” she said.

“And the remaining visitation were our friends and our ‘cultural vultures’ but they returned quite often and really valued us.

“Albury hasn’t been in the arts language for quite a while. Whether people like MAMA or not, and I’m sure there’ll be some people who think it’s too popularist, that’s OK.

“I don’t think our role with this project is to make it elitist; you can be controversial, you can be popular and you can be professional.

“One-third will value the art and go, one-third will say ‘it’s got to be entertaining’ and one-third will never care — that’s an Australia Council study.

“The new MAMA program and the building — it’s controversial, it’s exciting, it’s engaging, it changes a lot.

“You’ve still got your traditional spaces so people who are still wanting to see those works can engage with that but because we’ve gone from three galleries to 10, there will be so much more for everybody.”

Jacqui says the success of the Albury Library Museum had proved locally there is a demand and the demand is insatiable.

“Just crossing over with those two facilities and learning from their mistakes and learning from how this audience reacts to buildings like this, we’re very confident it will be a sustainable, successful public institution.”

JACQUI believes the launch of MAMA is only the start of the city’s re-engagement with the region’s creative professionals with provision for the development of a creative industries hub centred on the museum.

MAMA will share its administration area with three “hot desks” for photographers, film makers, graphic designers, interior designers and architects to work with the art museum team, volunteers and students in a creative environment.

“This will not only legitimise their practice, it will improve ours and give them an address upon which they can build their business,” she said.

“We want artists to live here, we want commercial galleries up and down Dean Street, we want our manufacturing and our businesses and industries to engage creative people to value add and that’s what I think is the next phase for our city after MAMA is up and running.

“Gallery 5 is a commercial gallery, so we’ve got a commercial gallery relationship with four galleries where we rotate Sydney and Melbourne new work from contemporary artists and those works are for sale.

“We want people in Albury to buy art and the more art they buy and the more they value it the better, because we want artists to have money in their pockets; we don’t want to continuously see them as among the lowest paid Australians.”

ANOTHER major component of MAMA will be the provision of education, with expressions of interest now sought among universities, TAFE colleges and other educators to partner with the art museum to develop and deliver specific art programs based on its collections and international shows and exhibitions.

“Already it’s been popular in starting conversations with these providers because how else will universities engage with local government at a practical level,” Jacqui said.

“We’re looking at everything from adult public programs — life drawing and watercolours during the day for the older folk and gap programs for transitional learning, all the way through to delivery on site and on campus programs that use our collection and the facilities we’ve got, that will include two studio spaces with full wet areas and a meeting room.

“Add to that the kids activity room and two meeting rooms in the library museum and a theatrette and theatre in the entertainment centre and it’s an arts campus.

“There’s this huge opportunity to be able to tender specific bespoke tertiary programs with our exhibition programs.”

ALBURY Council will be recruiting an education co-ordinator and a business development operations co-ordinator to join MAMA, as well as new members for its customer service team.

But that doesn’t mean the existing core team that has worked at the former gallery has been resting on its laurels during the redevelopment of the new building.

“Their intellectual property and their ability to be flexible is phenomenal,” Jacqui said.

“During this period we have digitised and audited the entire collection which is fantastic. A lot of galleries don’t have the opportunity to do that.

“We’ve also done significant assessment on the collection as well and conservation works, and have developed the educational platform and program.”

Jacqui says the past for the gallery has been about being custodians of the city’s collection, protecting and maintaining it, but not necessarily allowing people to see it.

“We didn’t have a space to showcase our collection so the community were lucky to see one work or a series of works every four or five years.

“But people are now excited we can make the collection work for us and donors in particular are excited.

“Since the MAMA project has been coming together and we have been talking to curators at Art Gallery NSW and the NGA, about the building, they are seeing this is a quality collection facility.”

So much so, the major metropolitan galleries are referring donors to MAMA with new treasures including 60 photographs from a Sydney-based collector including some by Max Dupain and Olive Cotton, which will complement MAMA’s existing collection.

“The amount of cultural gifts and the offers we have been getting are about four a month and we expect that to increase,” Jacqui said.

“The collection store will be comfortable to host our collection for the next 10 years; after that we’re anticipating it will double to have more than 5000 exhibits.”

THE former art gallery programmed 21 exhibitions annually; that will increase to 52 shows each year in an intense changeover program for MAMA.

“We will be constantly reassessing after 12 months and it’s an interlinked program with the library museum,” Jacqui said.

“We want people to engage and give us feedback; what they like, what they don’t like, what we can change and improve.”

A favourite for Jacqui among the MAMA program are the peepholes; treasures will be revealed behind beautifully constructed door handles and doors set at child-height within the new building. The components will change each month, linked with the program.

Then there’s the celebration of the archaeological finds on the MAMA site, with architects and builders now attempting to incorporate one underground feature as a permanent fixture with a hatch to reveal what was found below.

“There were a few contraband items that were found, you know pipes and drugs in bottles and other things from the 1890s,” Jacqui said.

“They were mainly underground and they were all in the wells where they were used as pits.

“QEII square is absolutely alive with archaeological elements, within a couple of metres down you’ve got foundations for every single part of the city’s civic utilities that started there; everything from the abattoirs to the police station and the fire station.

“We’re trying to experiment with a little hatch to see if we can do it. I think we can which would be really good so you get to be able to see these strange wells.

“Our archaeologist Sarah doesn’t know what it is because it’s a dual access well, they think, or it could be a pit for a blacksmith, or it could be some kind of underground store. It’s this beautifully double curved space that looks like a wood fired oven.”