One of Brisbane’s most loved arts venues is to be sold off and the CBD will lose its last bohemian bastion.
Metro Arts, at 109 Edward St, is housed in a multi-level 129-year-old building that has been central to Brisbane’s creative life for decades.
Buyers are now circling this desirable piece of real estate while some arts practitioners are lamenting the imminent loss of an icon.
Metro Arts is an arts incubator organisation that produces and facilitates cutting edge theatre, visual arts and other forms and while it will still do that in another location it won’t be quite the same.
As one arts insider said upon hearing about the possible sale: “The building is half the fun”.
Sure, it’s a rabbit warren and needs a lot of love but it’s funky and it adds a creative spark to downtown Brisbane.
Following a public meeting last night attended by scores of members of Brisbane’s arts community, CEO and creative director Jo Thomas revealed the organisation planned to stay until 2020 and move as soon as possible after that.
“The actual timing of our move will depend on our property negotiations,” Thomas said. “Our discussions surrounding a new home for Metro Arts are in their early stages but I can say options are under serious investigation.
“We have spent many months carefully researching our options and working closely with the State Government and Brisbane City Council.”
The building was erected in 1889 as a warehouse for importer and merchant George Myers and has had various incarnations since.
It’s heritage listed and needs work but Ms Thomas said “money spent on heritage maintenance is money not spent on artists and arts programs”.
A case in point: the building’s retro lift which was recently refurbished at a cost of $230,000. Metro Arts undertook a funding drive to fix it.
“At the time of the lift fundraising drive, the Metro Arts board had not investigated in any detail the option to sell the premises,” Thomas says.
Metro Arts board chair John Dunleavy said Metro Arts “has a long history of reinventing itself in response to the community’s needs”.
“This is our next step,” he said.
Many artists will lament its loss, people such as Sydney Festival director and playwright Wesley Enoch, who is now the organisation’s patron, started his career there along with Deborah Mailman and many others. It was never a residential building but artists have, illegally, lived in it over the years and it has what many regard as Brisbane’s answer to the Sistine Chapel — a foyer ceiling decorated with a mural by artist Stephen Nothling who once had his studio there.
Ms Thomas said Metro Arts was not just a building.
“It’s a dynamic multi-arts organisation and suite of creative services deserving of an inspiring, well-maintained inclusive and accessible home.”
She hopes to find a new building close to the CBD. West End would be perfect. But it’s the building that has made Metro Arts special to so many and it’s wonderful to have an arts enclave in the CBD. It has given the city a soul. New hotels and flash retail stores are one thing but history is also important.
Metro Arts’ city location will go out with a bang with a major festival planned for 2020 as part of a 40th birthday celebration.
Article from Courier Mail
