1987
In interview with Paul Foss (published in Hysterical Tears), Juan Davila dissected those sides of the "Art Institution" comprising the exhibition site as "the Museum (the precinct that makes the works sacred) and the commercial gallery (the space that makes the gaze private)". The clarity of this schema was confounded during Davila's 1987 exhibition at Bellas Gallery.
Bellas Gallery is a selling gallery, and the Davila show was a bold and tough departure for Brisbane's commercial galleries. At one time it would have been more usual for an artist of Davila's reputation to have been exhibited at the IMA: as disseminating sanctuary for the new, the intellectual, and the provocative. In exhibiting Davila, Bellas appeared to challenge the city's major non-commercial spaces (such as IMA, MOCA, LIAM and QAG) upon their hold on this role, as well as to show up the city's other commercial galleries' timidity.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the Bellas Gallery underwent a conceptual split for the Davila exhibition, a split which was delineated by the physical space. In the long white-walled, grey-floored front room, exposed to the street by sheet glass, the only two works which were not for sale were hung side by side on one wall. So, unaccompanied, absolute focus was provided for that vast work My Dress Hangs There, of Heide Park and Art Gallery, and for the smallest work This Continues Not To Be, from a private collection. Beyond the dividing wall in a back room were five smaller works, all for sale.
To speak of such a conceptual split occurring within the physical space is, however, an arbitrary analysis. Divisions between "the precinct which makes the works sacred" and
Juan Davila, This Continues Not To Be, 1987. Private Collection.
