The bush-hammered concrete walls of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) shine white against a vast, empty, blue sky. A silver globe, suspended by invisible wires above the main entrance, swings in the wind. Buses enter and leave the nearby landscaped coach-park. A blustery walkway connects the NGA to the High Court, beyond which is the National Science and Technology Centre and beyond that, the National Library. Across the park and above the distant trees blows the flag of Parliament Buildings for this is Canberra, capital of Australia. "You're going there?" people ask, shaking their heads. "What on earth for?"
The compromise capital when both Melbourne and Sydney vied for the title, Canberra is often derided for its newness, its planned orderliness, its artificial lake, its emptiness. Yet talk to the new Director of the NGA, Dubliner Brian Kennedy - formerly Assistant Director of the National Gallery of Ireland - and you get an entirely different picture. He loves it: "The thing about Australia is the light - and the sense of space. It's an extraordinarily seductive country. Here in Canberra, no one walks anywhere and when you look out from the windows of the Gallery you see no one so that reinforces the space. Not a soul, even though there are nearly 3000.000 people living here.
"When I first came to Australia I drove down to Melbourne and I couldn't get over the mirages, the emu, the kookaburra. And when I stopped to make a phonecall, there were kangaroos outside the phone-box."
Still in the first flush of starting his new job - he took up his post on September 8th - Brian Kennedy is firing on all four cylinders. His staff numbers 230, he has 100,000 acquisitions to look after and an annual budget of 25 million Australian dollars (approx £12 million) of which Aus$2m is for purchasing new works. His every comment or opinion is reported in the press. "I never realised what a high profile this job is," he says. In fact, the post is a prime-ministerial appointment, sealed by the Governor-General.
Only the third person to hold the position of director - the gallery was officially opened in 1982 - Kennedy succeeds Betty Churcher, who was 66 when she retired. So. what do the Australians think of a 35-year-old rank outsider landing up on their doorstep to run one of their most prestigious national institutions? A headline in the Sydney Morning Herald sets the tone: "Irish charmer launches his crusade with a song," it reads. The crusade refers to Kennedy's remarks that that the NGA collection is out of control. There are, to put it bluntly, too many acquisitions, a lot of them languishing unseen in the bowels of the building and the new broom is going to have to do something about them. It might seem like a criticism of his predecessor but he is adamant it isn't: "I've got great support from Betty Churcher," he says. Nevertheless, why him - and not an Australian? "I think I was appointed," says Kennedy (his stunning, pop-art tie competing for attention with the paintings on his office wall) "because I'm young, with a sensible approach to technology.
And coming from Ireland, I'm seen as being international. Mary Robinson did a lot to convey the idea that the Irish are intelligent - and . . . " - he reaches for another word. Fun and human are toyed with but finally discarded in favour of warm: "The Irish are intelligent and warm." The other thing he felt he had going for him was that, coming from the NGI, "we could never take anything for granted and that makes you hungry to achieve things".
He lists the things he wants to achieve in his new post: "To make the gallery better known, to make it more accessible and to bring in major exhibitions." This last is already in train with an important Rembrandt exhibition coming to the NGA in December. "This is attracting no less than 20 leading Rembrandt experts," he says and goes on to discuss the disappearance of the cultural cringe - that state of mind which used to leave Australians feeling they came second to Europe in the field of the arts. "There's a tyranny of Old Master paintings and of intellectual modernism which will not give way to less well-known cultures. That will change, though, over the next five years or so," he says.
He's well aware of the pitfalls of being too pushy. "This is a no-nonsense society: I was interviewed by people in their shirt-sleeves," he says and adds: "There's a sort of person here called a tall poppy. They get cut down if they get too big for their boots." A bit of a song and a sense of humour will be among his protective shields - hence the Sydney Morning Herald headline.
Australia, he says, seems as both very American and very British but in fact it's neither. It's Australian. "In this job, I start from Australia, which is Canberra. Then it's Australasia, then the world." The Australasia reference is interesting. A walk round the gallery reveals the richness of the Asian influence, coming either from painters who are of Chinese or Malaysian origin or from artists who have travelled northeastwards to bring back the fruits of their wanderings in places such as Japan and Cambodia.
On his office wall are two paintings, both relating to massacres. One is from Sydney Nolan's Kelly series and the other is by the aboriginal artist Rover Thomas, "one of the greatest abstract artists of the 20th century," says Kennedy. He shakes his head at the attempted destruction of the aboriginal culture by white Australians - some of them Christian Brothers. "Honest to God, it's terrible what was done," he says. The Rover Thomas painting relates to the 1920s discovery of a massacre in which the heads of murdered aboriginal people had been fixed to tree trunks.
There is a continuum to all this downstairs, for in the gallery is a major exhibition of aboriginal art, called The Wagilag Sisters Story. This is a long narrative presented as a symbolic depiction of aboriginal history: "It's a major exhibition, a collection of bark paintings made over the course of 50 years. The exhibition itself was seven years in the making," says Kennedy. "Many of the paintings had been taken out of the country years ago so this is the first time that the aboriginal community has been presented with its own art history. The symbolism is deep and non-materialist. The aboriginals are the soul of Australia."
Sadly, when the exhibition ends, the bark-paintings will once again be dispersed - though, since making Australian art more accessible is part of Kennedy's plan, this may not be a bad thing.
He agrees: "Here in Australia, the gallery has about 15 travelling exhibitions out on the road at any one time." The majority of these tend to be centred around the south-east coast but places such as Alice Springs and Darwin also get to see their share of the national treasures. Sponsorship plays an important role in the accessibility programme. On his desk is a CD rom entitled Stories From The Australian Landscape. Sponsored by Optus, the Australian telecommunication company, two copies of the CD Rom are being distributed free to every school in the country as well as being on sale to the general public.
The story of the Irish Arts Council pulping a book of his which appeared to be critical of government funding of the arts was picked up by most Australian papers. Did he expect to come across any of the prime minister's arts advisers in his new post? He smiles: "I don't know about that but what I do know is that I have a great committee." He answers to the Council of the NGA which has as its chair media chief Kerry Stokes, owner of, among others, The Canberra Times - the country's only totally Australian-owned newspaper. Interestingly, the vice-chair is Cameron (son of Tony) O'Reilly.
Things are looking good for Brian Kennedy. He's had a good press. He has one of Australia's most prestigious arts jobs and he's living in a country he's happy to bring up his children in. All he's got to be careful about now is handling his budget - and not becoming too tall a poppy.
