Dean Cross always felt that to succeed in his career he would need to leave regional Australia. Born and raised on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country near Goulburn, Cross moved to Canberra aged 12 — but ultimately, not even the nation's capital would prove big enough or far enough for the Worimi artist's ambitions.
After graduating high school in Canberra, Cross trained as a contemporary dancer at Brisbane's QUT, and developed a successful career as an contemporary dancer, choreographer and director — working with Lucy Guerin, Legs on the Wall and Force Majeure, among others.
And then in 2014 he decided to retrain in visual arts, at Sydney College of the Arts and then ANU's School of Art and Design.
The outcome is a trans-disciplinary practice that incorporates photography, sculpture, installation, performance and film.
In 2021, he returns to NSW's Southern Tablelands — as the recipient of Goulburn Regional Art Gallery's inaugural edition of The Good Initiative, an anonymously funded biennial $20,000 award.
The award enabled Cross, 35, to return home and 'close the circle', developing his first institutional solo exhibition: Icarus, My Son, which opened at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery in July and will tour to Sydney's Carriageworks in November.
The Good Initiative caps a banner year for Cross: he was a finalist in the Art Gallery of South Australia's Ramsay Art Prize, the most expensive, acquisitive prize for an Australian artist under 40; he is one of five artists selected to exhibit in the Museum of Contemporary Art's annual bellwether exhibition, Primavera 2021: Young Australian Artists.
Cross's latest success highlights the often under-sung role of regional museums and galleries in Australia's arts ecosystem, not only for local and emerging artists, but also for local communities.
De-centring national institutions
While real or imagined hierarchies of reputation, clout and visibility exist between our national institutions and their regional cousins, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many people to rethink their relationship to the regions.
People began working remotely or were prompted to make larger sea changes, as distances were simultaneously enforced and collapsed by the pivot to Zoom-based work relationships.
Cross speaks of "the deep rumble that COVID stirred in all of us".
"I think a lot of people thought, 'I'm not sure that we've been doing things the way we should have been,'" he says.
"I think we all suddenly realised that this focus towards this so-called centre is arbitrary. It's not real; it's something we've cooked up."
Icarus, My Son is not about COVID, though it does deal with ideas of cataclysms, home, hubris and loss. What it does interrogate is the way we think and talk about the regional versus the metropolitan.
It simultaneously draws on the myth of the young, ambitious Icarus who flies too close to the sun, only for his wings to melt, while being grounded in Cross's experience growing up in the regions where, like so many, he was encouraged to believe that success lies outside your hometown.
In Cross's words, the exhibition asks: "What does it mean to be regional, rural, remote? Remote from where? To where should I focus my aspirations? Where exactly is the so-called centre – and what will I find if I get there?"
Labels like 'regional' and 'remote' can be loaded and unhelpful. For Cross, they "reinforce a dichotomy of thinking".
"Instead of thinking like a constellation, like it actually is, we think about it as one side or the other; a centre and non-centre," he says.
This idea of a constellation certainly bears out when you reconsider the role that regional gallery collections play in crafting the bigger picture of Australia through its art and objects.
During the Whitlam era of the 70s, policies and funding programs framed investment in the arts as being for the greater public good as well as a means to help shape Australia's creative and cultural identity.
As a result, regional galleries began to build and consolidate specialised collections.
Wagga Wagga Art Gallery holds the National Art Glass Collection and a significant body of printed works, for example; Shepparton Art Museum has a major collection of historic and contemporary Australian ceramics; while Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) holds over 600 works of contemporary Australian photography.
Pieced together, these otherwise disparate collections form part of a wider whole.
Pathways of support
Goulburn Regional Art Gallery director Gina Mobayed, who recently announced her departure after four years in the role, believes regional galleries have an unrivalled opportunity to define their artistic vision and focus on an overlooked segment of the sector, thanks to their scale and localities.
Reflecting on her peers in other regional galleries, Mobayed says: "You can really see their vision very clearly in their programming and the ways the galleries present themselves.
"We have a real chance to fill gaps in the sector."
When Mobayed moved to Goulburn after nearly a decade working in Sydney at organisations including Artbank and the Museum of Contemporary Art, she brought a number of supporters with her, including a private donor who invited her to create what would become this new, biennial award.
The result is The Good Initiative, conceived by Mobayed as a flexible, ongoing prize that focuses on emerging artists working in or hailing from the Goulburn region.
"Instead of offering a singular prize that we're tied to, every two years we can look to the sector and ask, 'What do artists in our regions need?' and evolve it accordingly."
Brett Adlington, CEO of peak body Museums & Galleries of NSW (M&G NSW), says The Good Initiative demonstrates the nimble nature and super-sized impact of the regional sector.
"$20,000 every two years — what that can do to a smaller organisation is just huge," says Adlington.
"Artists are really looking at the regional gallery sector and seeing that it's a really exciting space to be working in. Projects like [The Good Initiative] totally illustrate that."
Before joining M&G NSW in 2021, Adlington spent nearly two decades working in regional galleries in Queensland and northern NSW, including 11 years as the director of Lismore Regional Gallery.
He points to the career of Northern Rivers-based Gamilaraay artist Penny Evans and her relationship with Lismore Regional Gallery as an example of the kinds of pathways and support a regional gallery can offer an artist as they build their practice.
Evans had a solo show at Lismore in 2014, followed by others in 2018 and 2020, and has also been involved in partnership and weaving projects and several group shows in the region as well as across the country.
Her ceramic and mixed-media works draw on the landscape and Gomeroi/Gamilaraay traditions of carving to challenge and decolonise 'Australian' narratives.
In November she will be one of more than 35 artists shown as part of the National Gallery of Australia's fourth National Indigenous Art Triennial, curated by Hetti Perkins.
"Seeing that progression of local artists in their practice is so exciting," says Adlington.
"And as an institution, to be a small part of that journey and to provide a training ground or early pathway is fantastic.
"You see so many artists where the regional gallery has become a really important part of that journey for them."
Call and response
Mobayed's four years at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery have taught her that "you can do any exhibition, anywhere".
She believes bold programming and bold ideas will succeed if they're programmed as a "call and response" with the local community.
Adlington agrees.
Balancing the needs and expectations of artists, community members and local government purse-holders can be a challenge, he says, but "that balance really pushes regional galleries into some really interesting spaces".
Cross has found regional galleries to be far more embedded in their communities than some of the bigger city museums he's worked with.
That sense of collaboration and community has been part of the joy of developing Icarus, My Son, affording Cross the opportunity to reflect on the significance of the location, its impact on his work and thinking, and what it might mean for local audiences and young people in particular.
For regional galleries, accountability to local audiences is both nuanced and non-negotiable.
Most regional galleries fall under the management of local government, which means budgets, programming decisions and partnerships must be justifiable. Curators have to ask "Why are we doing this? Why is it relevant to us?" says Adlington.
At the same time, Mobayed says, museums and galleries are more social spaces than they were a decade ago.
"I think when you're one of the only places in town where your child can go to a free creative workshop then absolutely you do become an essential service."
Investment in audiences
At Goulburn and most other regional galleries, public programs and locally generated exhibitions are mostly free.
Many galleries also develop long-standing partnerships with local government services including aged care, disability and education.
This investment in community and audiences is as vital as their investment in artists.
The nimbleness of regional galleries also means that when issues or events directly impact the community, those spaces are positioned to be part of the response.
Throughout 2020, for instance, Coffs Harbour Regional Museum undertook a community-based project with an art therapist and a local Gumbaynggirr elder that involved working with children from three local primary schools to help them process their experiences of the 2019/2020 summer bushfires.
Carriageworks Director of Programs Daniel Mudie Cunningham, who will be curating the Sydney iteration of Icarus, My Son, says these community-driven relationships are just one of many lessons that bigger city institutions could take from their regional cousins.
"We often think about the regional gallery as needing the support of the big city cousin — but sometimes it is actually learning from those communities as well," he says.
Mudie Cunningham's time as curator at Hazelhurst Arts Centre (then Hazelhurst Regional Gallery) in outer suburban Sydney gave him an insight into the significant relationship between a regional gallery and its local supporters.
For both Mudie Cunningham and Cross, how the two audiences respond to Icarus, My Son will be interesting to reflect on, in light of any lessons to be gained from these kinds of regional/city partnerships.
The tour to Carriageworks was not part of the award or exhibition's initial scope, so the fact it will now test, in a very real way, some of Cross's questions about the centre/non-centre relationship, only adds another layer to the experience of Icarus, My Son.
Carriageworks came on board as a partner for The Good Initiative after Cross, one of their resident artists, was announced as the winner.
"Being able to support and promote the success of our artists is what we do," Mudie Cunningham says.
Not knowing what either Cross or Goulburn Regional Gallery had planned — or even that the exhibition would tread some of these regional/city conversations — Mudie Cunningham reached out to Mobayed. "It just made sense, the more we talked about it.
"I think it really shows the sector that collaboration is important," says Mobayed.
"What I think is really nice is that we can go out, hand-in-hand, and show the sector what's possible in someone who's as brave and brilliant as Dean."
Cross, for one, hopes it is just the beginning.
"If it's only my exhibition, then it's going to be a total failure. But if the next Good Initiative is also able to present their work at Carriageworks, and that pathway is able to continue, that will have been a real success."
The regional partnership sets a precedent for Carriageworks too and it's one they are looking forward to building on.
In 2022 Mudie Cunningham's curated exhibition, Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship will begin a regional tour of Australia with support from Museums & Galleries NSW — culminating at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery in December 2023.
A constellation indeed.
Dean Cross: Icarus, My Son is showing at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery until August 28 and at Carriageworks from November 5 — January 30.
