WAMA Foundation – National Centre for Environmental Art

The turnoff for the Foundation is large and has been especially constructed for the purpose of feeding traffic safely into the parking area, which is large. The gallery is located about three and a half hours' drive from Melbourne.

NCEA has a spacious reception area that spills into a cafe. The tables are magenta and bottle green, which is very colourful and striking. The entry fee is small, or at least it was for the prize show I saw. The show didn’t really have a theme.

A lot of the works in the prize exhibition are figurative, such as Jesse Wallace's 'Peekaboo' (above) which shows a fur seal, a species endemic to Australia.

The show spaces are large and evidently suited not only to showing works but to accommodating events. I mean there is plenty of space for people to mingle and talk in comfort (see above photo).

The facility is well organised and has a cafe as already mentioned, important when you have to go so far just to get to the gallery. The gallery is situated in friest though of course to mitigate risk trees have been cleared from near the building.

The countryside was dry when I went but there had been rain earlier down the road. The gallery staff siad that around Halls Gap, where the gallery is locatged, they need rain. It was full summer and the week before there had been fires in other parts of the state.