I thought LP readers who aren’t lucky enough to be well acquainted with La Trobe University’s main campus might enjoy a peek at this highlight of the uni’s art collection. It’s been hanging in this stairwell – an appropriately bolshie stairwell, I guess, connecting as it does two floors occupied by different student equity and access offices – for at least fifteen years.
Can’t quite make it out? Closeups after the jump…
Aaaaah! Is that close enough for you? It had better be. How much do you like those pink laser beams? (Very VALIS.)
Obviously this painting dates back to the good old days when Peter Garrett was not a politician, or not a parliamentarian, anyway. I am quite proud of the uni for not embarrassedly shoving it down the back of a bookcase now that he’s joined the establishment. It’s a good reminder of how much things can change.
Before anyone starts sooking, I should point out the portrait entered La Trobe’s art collection as a gift from Niagara Galleries. No first-degree taxeating involved. The artist is Robert Hollingworth.
Very Valis indeed!
I hope LaTrobe, though, is on board with the “governance” agenda and it isn’t “intermingled” with a former Vice-Chancellor’s collection!
I don’t know if all universities do this – I don’t think UQ does – but one thing I’ve liked at Griffith and QUT is that the art collection is spread across the campus – paintings hanging in corridors and libraries.
I’m particularly fond of one in the QUT Gardens Point library of two robots having sex.
I might go take a pic next time I’m out there!
I remember this from when I was a student at La Trobe in the early 1990s. The building it is in is one of the (many) routes between the Agora and the Union building (where the bar was located). A mate of mine who was a massive Oils fan used to genuflect every time we went past it. Also being a greenie, I suspect he might just spit these days.
I wonder what will become of it the next time the students occupy the Admin building?
Klassic Komment Dr Faustus.
Speaking as a La Trobe student, it’s a nice reflection on the rather radical edge that the place has had. Just a shame that the current funding Uni Council has allocated for student services and representation here doesn’t match the rhetoric.
(And, for those wanting to see the pic in the flesh, it’s on Level 2 of Peribolas East, next to the Student Housing office.)
Are you sure it’s not Michael Klim?