 | HEIDE New work at the Heide Museum
of Modern Art, by O’Connor and
Houle, extends the Reeds’ vision
of landscape, art and place.
REVIEW SHELLEY PENN
PHOTOGRAPHY TREVOR MEIN
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The striking new
elevation of Heide III,
with the new Albert
and Barbara Tucker
Gallery behind.
Progeny, 2004–2005,
by John Meade, is seen
in the foreground.
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Looking over
the Loti Smorgon
Courtyard to the entry
to Heide III, with the
jagged black forms of
the new gallery seen to
the left. Anish Kapoor’s
limestone works,
In the presence of form
and Untitled, are in
the foreground.
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The existing Loti
Smorgon Gallery in
Heide III, with a new
opening allowing
visual links to the
landscape beyond. The
exhibition shown is
Imagine.... the creativity
shaping our culture,
with Lizzy Newman’s
installation, You’re
still making history that
no-one else knew how to,
2006, seen to the left.
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Rings of Saturn,
2005–2006, by Inge
King, a major new
sculpture in the Sir
Rupert Hamer Garden.
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The new opening
punctures the wall
of the Loti Smorgon
Gallery.
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Looking along
the length of the new
Albert and Barbara
Tucker Gallery with
views to the Sir Rupert
Hamer Garden and
Inge King’s Rings of
Saturn beyond. The
exhibition is Meeting a
dream: Albert Tucker in
Paris, 1948 – 1952.
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The new opening
in the wall of Heide III
allows a view from
the foyer, through the
galleries, to the framed
landscape beyond.
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The reconfigured
Heide shop.
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Heide II, by
McGlashan Everist,
1963, restored by Bryce
Raworth as part of the
redevelopment work.
The sculpture in the
foreground is Sidestep,
1971, by Anthony
Caro. Photograph
John Gollings.
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Interior of
Heide II, with the
exhibition New to the
modern: Heide twenty five
years on, which
showed until late
February. Photograph
David Pidgeon.
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The Sidney
Myer Education
Centre, a new building
in Heide’s “colony” of
places. It sits above
the pasture-lawn, with
Heide II seen in the
distance.
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The interior
learning space
and semi-enclosed
forecourt of the Sidney
Myer Education
Centre, overlooking
the open pasture-lawn.
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John and Sunday Reed were early exponents and
patrons of Modernism in Australian art and design.
Their home at Heide was a centre for discussion and
avant-garde ideas in the 1930s and 40s, where an
awareness of the greater context of world art and
literature was taken for granted. The Reeds supported and
fostered young writers and artists such as Albert Tucker
and Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester, John Perceval and others.
They were instrumental in bringing the works of Nolan
and Tucker to public attention, and they supported these
artists throughout their lives, despite falling out with
both in the late 40s. Some histories depict the Reeds
as somewhat cloying, emotionally dependent on their
association with these artists. In his introduction to Bert
& Ned: the correspondence of Albert Tucker and Sidney Nolan,
Patrick McCaughey notes, “The Reeds, who had appeared
so cosmopolitan, so sophisticated, during the previous
decade, looked increasingly provincial, locked into an
anachronistic version of history, a memory of things past
that was oppressive and unreal. The artists transformed
themselves; the Reeds entrenched themselves in the
mythology of Heide.”¹
The contemporary reality of Heide as a museum and
as a place tells a different story. A museum of modern
art and design in Australia was first envisaged by the
Reeds in the 1930s and established by 1960. In 1980, they
gifted it to the state for the public benefit, indicating a
broad vision and a genuine desire to contribute beyond
their milieu. Heide has thrived on the strength of that
vision and its continuing relevance. Related to their
engagement in the cultural environment was the Reeds’
sensitivity to and awareness of the physical landscape
within which they lived. Their development of the estate
and the agenda set by their approach are significant
contributions in themselves, and the most recent works
at Heide, completed last year, have been executed with an
acute sensitivity to its heritage.
Heide is located in Bulleen, now a 15-minute trip
north-east of Melbourne. Arrival is via a hilltop, where
their original house is located and from which the land
falls away to the north and west, with broad views across
the Yarra River flood plain and remnant undulations
of the Great Dividing Range. Although embedded in
suburbia, the estate is substantial. Its access to the river,
native reserves and its own landscape gives it the rarefied
air of a sanctuary.
For thirty years, the Reeds occupied Heide I, a
fairly typical Victorian cottage disconnected from
its landscape. The Reeds’ real living place, however,
was beyond the house: they played and worked in the
gardens, recruiting their frequent visitors to join in; they
cultivated different spaces including kitchen gardens,
stands of fruit trees, open lawns and pockets of native
bush. Their cultivation of the landscape was about place
making, feeding the mind-soul as well as the body. By the
early 1960s, they began placing sculpture in the garden,
extending their occupation of it as a dwelling place.
Their support of modern art and design included
architecture, and they engaged with young Modern
architects such as Guilford Bell and McGlashan Everist.
In 1961 McGlashan Everist was commissioned to build
the Reeds’ beach house at Aspendale, and two years later
their new house, Heide II, at Bulleen. This commission
clearly expressed the Reeds’ sensibility. Philip Goad
quotes the Reeds on their brief to the architect: they
sought “the sense of walls within and extending into a
garden”, and later noted, “We consider the building itself
as a sculpture set in a garden, in some ways reminiscent
of a maze, and we adopted a modular and open-ended
plan form, capable of extension.” ² Goad also notes that
they agreed to McGlashan’s suggestion to site the house
“lower down on the property to take advantage of the
view within the valley instead of over it.”
The result is an exceptional building, highly
acclaimed since its completion in 1968. The essential
idea of relationship with landscape, as identified in the
Reeds’ brief, is manifest in the building plan, the spatial
sensibility, the form, the scale, and in all of its details.
You do not have to be an architect to understand this at
an intuitive level: the connection from inside to out, the
unravelling of spaces from the centre, and the constant
awareness of the surrounding landscape is essential to an
experience of the building. On approaching from outside,
from any direction, the cubic forms seem to open up,
revealing themselves first as garden walls, then leading
to courtyards or semi-enclosed gardens, and finally to
internal spaces. Demonstrating their urge to knit with
the landscape, the house is also testament to the Reeds’
early vision to create a museum of modern art, with their
brief for Heide II requiring that it have “a quality of space
and natural light appropriate to a gallery”. The Reeds
lived in Heide II for thirteen years until 1980, a year
before their deaths.
Given the significance of landscape for Heide, the
next architectural development was disappointing.
Heide III, a dedicated public gallery, was designed by
Andrew Andersons of Peddle Thorp and Walker and
completed in 1993. It was closed in plan and form,
appearing hermetic and bulky in contrast to Heide II,
whose scale is modulated through its articulation as
a series of walls. It mimicked Heide II’s main exterior
materials and some details, and connected to it
physically such that the two buildings were blurred,
confusing the reading of Heide II and making the whole
a greater mass on the site. This undermined Sunday
Reed’s early conception of “a colony or a significant
relationship between dwellings”, and the idea of existing
in relationship with the landscape. With limited access
to natural light and views, interior and exterior spaces
were disconnected. Although this was common for
gallery interiors, its external expression need not have
been so blunt. The architecture of Heide III mistook the
importance of landscape and all things Modern to the
Reeds, and undermined the essence of Heide II.
Last year, the most recent developments at Heide
were unveiled. These began life with an architectural
design competition for a Heide master plan and
a commission in 1999 for O’Connor and Houle
Architecture, whose winning scheme stood out for its
sensitivity to the physical and historical landscapes of
Heide. Seven years later, and after a complex process, it
was completed at a much reduced but still broad scope.
The most obvious component of the new work is the
extension of Heide III with two new gallery spaces: the
Albert and Barbara Tucker Gallery and associated Study
Centre, and the Andrew Myer and Kerry Gardner Project
Space, with a new foyer and shop, as well as storage and
loading facilities. The addition is interesting on several
levels. In terms of the connection and later division
between Albert Tucker and the Reeds, the bequest of
Tucker’s work to Heide just before his death in 1999
appears a strong gesture of reconciliation. In relation
to the development of architecture and landscape, the
new work is also a restorative gesture – rectifying the
aberrant original Heide III and restoring the experience
of landscape as core to the estate.
The new Heide III consists of a long, narrow, zinc-clad
form with jagged, abstracted sawtooth roof lights
popping up above. It reads as a black, textured wall, with
only the roof forms hinting at the third dimension. On
approaching the building from the hilltop and winding
down the drive, it appears as a sculptural element
against the backdrop of the valley and hills, and conceals
the bulk of the old Heide III roof behind. Close up, it
embraces the new external plaza with a slight kink
in alignment, leading the eye toward the entry and
the mind to the walls of Heide II. Detailing is fine but
not overwrought, and the precise yet uncomplicated
butt joint connecting Heide II and III is refreshing.
The new Project Space nestles in between new and old
Heide III forms, as does a ramp connecting the galleries,
distinguishing the forms internally. Virtually hidden
behind the new structure are additional ancillary spaces,
the only disappointment in this work: plain rectilinear
and finished with natural grey cement render (a new
addition to the Heide palette), they lack the fine handling
of scale and proportion so evident elsewhere. Internally,
the old Heide III has been altered to improve awareness
of the greater context, with new light shafts and
external views allowing the visitor to locate themselves
according to landmark elements in the landscape. From
the curatorial point of view, these are welcome and
manageable connections to the world outside, and an
appropriate step for Heide. Landscape is brought back
to the fore and intelligent respect returned to Heide II.
Other new works extend and reinforce context
as central to an understanding of Heide. A number of
new garden spaces have been established including
the Sir Rupert Hamer Garden, a collaboration between
O’Connor and Houle and Elizabeth Peck Landscape
Architect. This aims to blur the distinctions between art
object and landscape, and incorporates a new sculpture
by Inge King, viewed from within the new gallery and
garden. The Tony and Cathie Hancy Sculpture Plaza is
partly formed by the gallery. It extends the existing Loti
Smorgon Courtyard and creates a substantial entry plaza
– from here the new form reads most strongly as a wall
leading the eye to Heide II. The Heide II Kitchen Garden
has also been restored and extensively replanted. Heide II
has itself been restored by Bryce Raworth, with a number
of previously closed spaces now open to the public.
The Sidney Myer Education Centre, also by O’Connor
and Houle, is a wholly new building. Located to the
north-east of Heide II, it overlooks the open pasture-lawn
and provides a dedicated space for children to learn
about the arts. It directly contributes to the idea of a
“colony” of places, in relationship within a landscape.
It is a small, box-like building, hovering above the
ground, with a main interior learning space and
a semi-enclosed forecourt from which broad timber
steps for access and play extend into the new Helen
Macpherson Smith Garden, landscaped by Heide’s head
gardener Nick Harrison. This building represents an
extension of ideas, with insightful references to Heide II
and Heide III and offering a “new” modernism for Heide.
One contrast is its presence as a complete entity, separate
from the landscape. Another is the forecourt, which also
offers an abstract link. Profoundly different from the
courts of Heide II – made of walls founded in the earth,
open to sky and extending outward – this space is open
at front and back, and carved out of the greater form.
The building is clad in black lightweight metal, a link to
Heide III. Although a small building, the perceived scale
is slightly oversized due to the clarity of form and relative
lack of articulation. However, I suspect this is temporary
and its baldness will diminish as the garden matures.
The Heide first envisioned by John and Sunday
Reed was a place of beauty where creative talent
was to be nurtured and celebrated. After seventy
years, the vision is still resonant, and their legacy is
an extraordinary contribution to Australian art and
design, both as a museum and as a place. The support of
Modern art and architecture has grown, and the estate
continues to evolve around a sensibility for landscape
and relationship. Each development of the physical
environment reveals something of its cultural context,
and the stories are not about languishing in mythology.
These most recent works extend the Reeds’ vision
with sensitivity and intelligence, and affirm Heide’s
undiminished vitality.
Shelley Penn is a practising architect. She is also the
Deputy Victorian Government Architect.
¹ Patrick McCaughey, Bert & Ned: the
correspondence of Albert
Tucker and Sidney
Nolan (The Miegunyah
Press: Melbourne, 2006).
² Philip Goad, “Walls
in a Landscape:
the making of
Heide II” from Living
in Landscape: Heide and
houses by McGlashan
Everist, the catalogue
to an exhibition
curated by Goad at
Heide Museum of
Modern Art last year.
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HEIDE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
REDEVELOPMENT, 2005–2006
Heide III
Redevelopment
and Sidney Myer
Education Centre
Architect
O’Connor + Houle
Architecture—
project team
Stephen O’Connor,
Annick Houle, Chris
Lamborn, Jennifer
Mueller, Rim Martin.
Landscape architect
Elizabeth Peck
Landscape Architect.
Heritage authority
Heritage Victoria.
Structural and
civil engineer
Irwinconsult.
Mechanical, electrical,
hydraulic, security
and fire engineer
Connell Wagner.
Lighting consultant
Electrolight.
Quantity surveyor
Slattery Australia.
Building surveyor
Hendry Group.
Builder
Adco Constructions.
Heritage advisor
Bryce Raworth.
Project manager
Lateral Projects
and Development.
Heide II Restoration
Heritage advisor
Bryce Raworth.
Heritage authority
Heritage Victoria.
Structural and civil
engineer
Beauchamp Hogg
Spano Consultants.
Mechanical, electrical,
hydraulic, security
and fire engineer
Connell Wagner.
Project manager
Lateral Projects and
Development.
Builder
JMA Builders, Contract
Management Systems.
2005–2006 Heide Redevelopment
Redevelopment
partners
Victorian State
Government through
the Community
Support Fund,
Australian Government
through the Federation
Cultural and Heritage
Projects Program,
Sidney Myer Fund,
Helen Macpherson
Smith Trust, Australian
Government under its
Regional Partnerships
Program, Australian
Government through
the Department of
the Environment and
Heritage, Victorian
State Government
through the Creating
Better Places Program.
Client
Heide Museum
of Modern Art.
Council
City of Manningham.
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