Australia’s largest regional art gallery opens
Gold Coast’s HOTA Gallery (pronounced ‘hotter’) opened this month.
The $60.5 million facility supersedes The Art Gallery of Ballarat as regional Australia’s biggest exhibition hall of its type.
The Queensland venue will display over 4400 works worth a total $32 million.
Some of the art, part of the HOTA Collection which established in 1968, has never been displayed.
Rising six-storeys and with c2000 square metres of AAA-rated international standard area, the complex at 135 Bundall Road, Surfers Paradise, has been on the drawing board since 2013.
Melbourne architect ARM designed it while Hansen Yuncken – also based in the Victorian capital – constructed it.
The museum replaces the Gold Coast Art Gallery, which was completed in 1986.
HOTA Gallery
The exhibition centre’s signature work is a painting, The Rainforest, which council acquired in 1991 for c$80,000 following a fund raising (story continues below).
That work is now speculated to be worth nearly $1m.
The hall also includes a dedicated Children’s Gallery and will offer one of the largest collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander art for a region, the builder said.
“To have been part of the construction of this incredible Gold Coast landmark is a significant recognition of our expertise in the area,” Hansen Yuncken’s Queensland state manager, Greg Baumann, added.
“In particular, we are proud to be able to work with so many specialist Gold Coast-based businesses,” according to the executive.
“This local connection means that not only will the HOTA Gallery play host to the work of the area’s artists, but that the project could include artisan and tradespeople who were an integral part of the construction of the very walls themselves”.
Hansen Yuncken also delivered Hobart’s MONA Gallery (Museum of Old and New Art).
Last year it refurbished Adelaide’s Her Majesty’s Theatre.
