Australian Centre for Photography closes doors
‘Pathway to extinction': Australian Centre for Photography closes doors
By Linda Morris
Sydney Morning Herald, November 19, 2020
The Australian Centre for Photography, critical in launching the careers of Bill Henson and Tracey Moffatt, will close its doors due to a cash crunch brought on by COVID-19 lockdown, the shift to smartphone photography and funding cuts.
The ACP board announced Thursday it had made the "painful decision" to cease its programs at its Darlinghurst gallery and "hibernate" while it restructures the organisation to protect it from "ongoing financial losses".
Australian Centre for Photography chief executive Pierre Arpin with photographs by Maija Tammi. Photo by Brook Mitchell
Lisa Moore, daughter of photographer David Moore who conceived the idea of a non-profit cultural centre to advance the medium in Australia in 1970, described it as a sad day for photography.
Moffatt, who had her first solo exhibition at the ACP in 1990 which brought her critical attention before she became one of Australia's most famous artists, hoped the centre would emerge again "in a showy splashy way" with everything the same as she remembered it - "a gallery, workshops, prizes, and research".
The ACP was the first to show the work of photographer Bill Henson, for which he said "along with a free tertiary education, I remain eternally grateful".
"We are perhaps, after all, entering unchartered waters with regard to both the political and economic landscape. Historically, of course, any historian can tell you that the diminution of the arts tends to parallel the rise of barbarism. But we shall have to wait and see," Henson said.
Artist Tracey Moffatt staged her first solo exhibition at the ACP.Photo bu Kate Ballis
December 16 will be the last day for the ACP's four full-time, two part-time staff and 15 casual tutors in what its director and chief executive Pierre Arpin describes as the latest in a series of hard knocks for the arts sector.
ACP chairman Michael Blomfield said in a statement: "In the face of massively reduced income in the COVID era, and the reality that our organisation will not receive any operational funding from federal or state funding bodies for the next three years as a minimum, it is clear that continuing to operate in our current form is a pathway to extinction”.
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