The east coast curator returns to WA with an unwavering commitment to champion local artists.
HANNAH Mathews relocated from her home state of Victoria to Western Australia for a second time in January to lead Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts as its fourth chief executive.
“I certainly didn’t start 2022 thinking I would be leaving Melbourne, but I was approached about applying for this job and then a number of weirdly serendipitous things occurred … things that popped up in front of me and were reminding me about Perth and WA,” Ms Mathews told Business News.
Clearly a fan of what she affectionately calls WA’s ‘rogue and independent spirit’, Ms Mathews’ first stint in this state was as a curator at PICA more than 15 years ago, working under Sarah Miller and her now predecessor, Amy Barrett-Lennard.
Before becoming director, Ms Mathews had been a senior curator at the Monash University Museum of Art and held similar roles at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and the Biennale of Sydney.
Ms Mathews said the biggest professional shift associated with the move to PICA was stepping away from curatorial roles into a more holistic directorship position.
“When I talked about it with my peers and mentors, they all said this was absolutely the next step, this was where I had to go,” she said.
“PICA being a multi art-form organisation was a perfect fit for someone with my different areas of expertise because it’s not just visual art, it’s an institution.
“We’ve got performance space we’ve got studios, and we’re really interested in working with artists who are pushing the boundaries of form and practice. It was just a very organic next step.”
Ms Mathews said she believed PICA had a unique place in Perth’s cultural landscape.
“We’re an unsanctioned space, that’s probably the way to think about it,” she said.
“We’re where artists come to experiment … a safe space for risky ideas.”
Ms Mathews said she was eager to galvanise the organisation in her own way, while remaining conscious of the institution’s history.
“I have very strong belief and passion … and that can be compelling. I think you need that as a director,” she said.
“But I’ve got a lot of very strong female mentors in my memory talking to me for when I need that little bit of reassurance.
“Specifically in terms of PICA, I’m channelling a bit of Sarah Miller, and her passionate commitment to artists and being there in service of the artist.
“And then from Amy Barrett-Lennard. Amy did a lot to professionalise the organisation. She diversified its income streams, created donors and private support, which is essential.”
Ms Mathews said it was constant work, but that PICA had a healthy split in terms of funding across private, state and federal income streams.
Ultimately, Ms Mathews said she was focused on keeping PICA grounded as a place that supported artists.
“Without them, there’s no purpose for us,” she said.
“I’ve always felt like that’s who art organisations are in the service of, it should never be the other way around.”
Ms Mathews plans to rejuvenate the four studios in the building by setting up an artist-in-residence and international exchange programs, initiatives she feels were lost during the pandemic.
She also has ambitions to establish a multi-year residency for a Perth company in the space, with an organisation yet to be announced.
“It means that community of artists is always in the building, not just when we’re presenting exhibitions, or installing or performance, that energy will always be in this building,” Ms Mathews said.
Delivered across four seasons, which are curated around the weather as the building has no climate control (also on Ms Mathews’ to-do list), PICA’s programming embraces its heritage as a place of learning.
The red brick building on Northbridge’s James Street was first opened as a school in 1897 before eventually becoming an exhibition space led by Perth’s contemporary arts collective, Praxis, in the 1980s.
That followed a push from WA’s artistic community at the time, which included prominent WA modernist landscape painter Guy Grey-Smith.
The Hatched National Graduate Show is arguably the exhibition that typifies PICA’s educational spirit, pulling together graduates from across the country to Perth in a one-of-its-kind showcase.
“That’s an exhibition PICA has done for 32 years,” Ms Mathews said, adding there were 26 artists coming from 21 art schools for the show running May to July this year.
“The event is really around the next generation of artists and identifying them, acknowledging them, connecting them to each other so they have a national network, that goes forward with you.”
Audience plays a large role in measuring the success of a gallery, but there’s an assured sense of ‘build it and they will come’ from Ms Mathews when asked about bringing a broad demographic of people through the door.
She’s again guided by a recurring principle of serving artists first.
“That just means paying attention to what artists are doing, being engaged with what’s happening around you, what people are talking about,” Ms Mathews said.
“That’s the idea, right? Rather than just ticking boxes.
“And I think as a small-to-medium organisation we can be quite responsive and quite nimble. We’re not a big ship.”
Recent estimates indicate more than 1.5 million people have visited PICA since it officially opened in 1991.
“We generally say at least 300 people a day through the building.
That’s not including people who we’re engaging with online,” Ms Mathews said, adding she was confident those numbers would continue to grow.
As the director of an anchor tenant of Perth Cultural Centre and long-time observer of the comings and goings in that space, Ms Mathews has plenty of feedback for the redevelopment of the space, led by Cox Architecture and tipped to start this year.
“It’s a pretty mad motley mix of things to have together in one space, but maybe that’s reflective of WA’s rogue spirit,” she said.
Ms Mathews is a fan of the work done by her neighbours at PICA Bar, which maintains a steady hum of patrons at virtually all hours through the week, and hopes the revamp will make the cultural centre more than just a place to pass through.
“I would like to see hospitable space where people want to meet, where people can linger comfortably without being sunburnt or rained on,” she said.
Ms Mathews also hopes it can become a place where First Nations people can see themselves in the site’s buildings and landscapes.
“I would also suggest that the title of ‘cultural centre’ should really be revisited as part of this redevelopment and consultation process. I think it’s a really hard collection of words for First Nations people,” she said.
Ms Mathews is advocating for a designated First Nations position within PICA.
