Death of an Art School

The remnants of a once great art department. Gippsland Centre of Art and Design (GCAD) once was a preeminent art department that was established at the Gippsland Institute of Advance Education (GIAE), then Monash University. In 2013, Ballarat University took over the Gippsland campus and Federation University established. To align with the established art school in Ballarat, GCAD was renamed to ‘The Arts Academy’. The Arts Academy Gippsland closed in 2024 with the final graduating students ending over six decades of cutting edge fine art creating. For the last two days of April 2026, doors were open for the public to pick over the carcass of the gutted school. Yesterday, May 1st, only the empty buildings remain as testament to what has gone before.

I had a 21 year relationship with GCAD (my preferred name for it). I entered the school in 2000 as a second year student after obtaining a Diploma of Visual Art at Central Gippsland Institute of TAFE in 1998/99. After two years of my undergraduate degree and a year of Honours, I was offered employment as an assistant lecturer in Photomedia for a semester. At the end of that semester, I was employed as a technical officer until took voluntary redundancy in December 2020. During the final couple of years, I also took on lecturing in Photomedia and Drawing when teachers couldn’t be found.

The ‘death’ of the art school was not a shock, it wasn’t sudden like a heart attack. It was like cancer, a lingering demise that was obvious for some years before I eventually left. I did sound the alarm, tried to fight and it felt like I was being treated as Chicken Little screaming ‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling!’. I was treated with eye-rolls at best, arrogant dismissal at worse. What would a lowly tech know? Keep in your lane Neale. I was looked at with distain when I had the temerity to ask difficult questions in the presence of Deans and Vice Chancellors alike. It was exactly like cancer. To save the patient, you need aggressive invasive intervention and a lot of tender loving care. GCAD received none of that accept for the occasional Band-Aid and a Panadol (home brand).

Coroners Report: Euthanised (inhumanly) due to lack of treatment caused by apathy, negligence and/or by design.

ANZAC Day