Bye bye brutalism, hello Instagrammers: inside Geelong’s spectacular $140m arts centre

When Joel McGuinness was brought on to oversee the redevelopment of the Geelong Arts Centre, and subsequently run the venue as its CEO and creative director, he wanted to change more than the 1980s building’s brutalist aesthetics. He wanted to redefine its purpose, to open it up to people who may have thought they didn’t belong.

“I really wanted to challenge the notion of black box theatres that turn their back on the world,” he says. “To change the relationship between the art and the audience. Because when the baby boomers die out, maybe the institutions as we know them will die out too.”

‘The venues were full’ … Joel McGuiness, the Geelong Arts Centre CEO and creative director. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

One of the key elements of the design brief was to address what is known as “threshold anxiety”: the sense that cultural institutions have traditionally been very bad at encouraging nervous, uninitiated audiences into their spaces. While McGuinness won’t be drawn on specific examples, they aren’t hard to find: the National Gallery of Victoria has a literal moat around it to ward off newcomers and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s monolithic monstrosity of rusted metal seems to dare anyone to approach.

The original Geelong Arts Centre – which “helped kickstart the careers of Rachel Griffiths and Guy Pearce”, as Victoria’s creative industries minister, Steve Dimopoulos, reminds us – was built in 1981, before notions of access had much currency. But in many ways the community had outgrown it.

“The venues were full,” McGuinness says. “It had become impossible to mount a professional production in the city for many months of the year.”

‘We set out to discover how you welcome country into the very fabric of the building,’ says McGuinness. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

So the state government invested $140m into an entirely new building designed by ARM Architecture, the firm responsible for many of the country’s arts institutions, including Melbourne Theatre Company’s Southbank theatres and the Melbourne Recital Centre.

The result is a building that seems designed for maximum flexibility, as malleable as a theatre complex can be. Its exterior is covered in a giant curtain of concrete, pulled back to reveal its massive glass atrium.

‘A curtain of concrete’ on the exterior. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

The Open House, a 250-seat venue that can ingeniously open out to the street and into the downstairs foyers, is a multipurpose space intended to break down the rigidity and stuffiness of traditional theatres. The bigger 550-seat Story House can be configured in a number of ways, with traditional seating banks, in traverse or in the round. It can even be arranged into a flat-floor live music venue that fits an extra 300 people – this will be its initial configuration when Jessica Mauboy and Missy Higgins perform at the centre’s opening night party on Saturday.

Worimi-born, Wadawurrung-based artist Gerard Black will be there for the opening, having played a vital part in the building’s conception and effect. He was one of four Indigenous artists – along with Kait James, Tarryn Love and Mick Ryan – chosen as co-designers of the interior spaces. His routed timber and acrylic eel – backlit and programmed so it can change colour depending on the building’s requirements – dominates the cafe on the ground floor.

Worimi-born, Wadawurrung-based artist Gerard Black, in front of his eel artwork. Photograph: Peter Foster

“I used to think the eel was so gross and slimy when I caught them in Spring Creek [near Torquay on the Bellarine Peninsula] where I grew up,” Black explains. “But the more I studied them and learned about them, about their 500km journey up to the Coral Sea, the more I realised how beautiful they are.”

He sees a direct correlation with his own people, whose culture has long been marginalised, debased or simply ignored but is finally beginning to be appreciated for its richness and diversity. And while this collaboration with a large corporate entity is something of a natural step for Black – his father worked for Quicksilver until the day he died and Black has worked with Rip Curl and the NRL as an artist and designer – in some ways it’s a radical departure from usual practice.

‘We wanted multiple reasons for people to come into the building.’ Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

“We set out to discover how you welcome country into the very fabric of the building,” says McGuinness. And it’s true that the Indigenous elements do feel integral rather than merely decorative. The ground floor, extending to the outside pavement, is the ochre of the earth. The first floor, with its curved timber gables and mottled grey carpets, represents the local Moonah forests of greater Geelong. The Story House, with Love’s stunning depiction of Yoowak, or the night, is the entry into sky country, ruled over by the wedge-tailed eagle deity Bunjil. “It’s not just a mural on a wall,” says McGuinness. “It’s far deeper than that.”

The building is also highly photogenic, in that way that brings Instagram suspiciously to mind. There is the deep red of the downstairs bar leading into a starkly brilliant white box, evocative of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; an opulent multicoloured marble staircase surrounded by pressed white glass; and, apropos of nothing, a deep oceanic blue tunnel connecting the arts centre to the building next door.

It is ‘evocative of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey’. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

When asked if the spaces were designed to be as Instagrammable as possible, McGuinness is upfront: “Yes, we did. People want to share their experiences and we wanted multiple reasons for people to come into the building.”

There is certainly an element of fun about it; “moments that surprise and delight”, in McGuinness’s words. But some features – slightly cutesy neon hand signs and brightly coloured chandeliers in the cafe – border on the kitsch and don’t really cohere with the deep spiritualism of the Indigenous artists.

‘We’re excited to see what artists do with it’: inside the tunnel. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

Black believes the building will grow into itself and eventually become part of the fabric of the city. “You go for a walk in Geelong and Aboriginal culture is just everywhere,” he says. This new building aims “to share that with everyone, to help everyone understand our connection to spirit and to the land. I loved working with [Geelong Arts Centre] because they’re a place of storytelling. They understood the significance of their location.”

Dimopoulos calls it “a culmination of years of dedication, passion and community collaboration”. As for McGuinness, he’s just looking forward to opening the doors. “It’s a major cultural facility now. We’re excited to see what artists do with it.”