HOTA and the Gold Coast Arts Scene: Culture in the Theme Park City

The Home of the Arts (HOTA) on the Gold Coast, the major arts and cultural precinct at Surfers Paradise that the Queensland Government and the Gold Coast City Council have invested in as the cultural counterpoint to the city's tourism and entertainment identity, provides the performing arts, the visual arts gallery, the outdoor amphitheatre, and the cultural education programs that the Gold Coast community of 600,000 people requires for the cultural life that the beaches and the theme parks alone cannot satisfy for the resident who values the arts and the cultural programming that a major city of the Gold Coast's scale should sustain. The HOTA development, centred on the recently completed Home of the Arts Gallery that provides the world-class visual arts exhibition facility that the Gold Coast has lacked in the absence of a quality public gallery space, creates the cultural anchor that the arts precinct requires to sustain the programming depth and the audience development that the visual arts institution provides for the region's arts community.

The HOTA Outdoor Stage, the open-air amphitheatre on the lake at the HOTA precinct that the Queensland arts organisations and the touring festivals use for the summer season performances that the subtropical climate and the outdoor entertainment market of the Gold Coast sustain for the concert and the festival programming that the outdoor venue accommodates, provides the event space that the cultural precinct uses to create the community gathering and the arts experience that the lake setting and the outdoor performance atmosphere create as the distinctively Gold Coast arts event that the beach and the subtropical outdoor culture amplifies. The Home of the Arts programming, including the ticketed performances, the free community events, and the markets and the family programs that the precinct organises around the core arts facilities, creates the community access to the arts that the precinct design has prioritised for the inclusive cultural space that the Gold Coast community of diverse incomes and cultural backgrounds can all access and use as the public arts space.

The Gold Coast Arts Centre and the broader arts community of the city, including the independent galleries, the theatre companies, and the music venues that the arts ecosystem requires alongside the flagship institution of the HOTA to sustain the diverse and the vibrant arts culture that the arts community creates through the independent and the alternative programming that the major institutions cannot provide for the experimental and the emerging arts practices that the fringe of the arts community generates, sustains the arts ecology that a city of the Gold Coast's ambition needs alongside the major arts institution that the HOTA represents. The Bleach Festival, the annual contemporary arts festival that the Gold Coast presents in the first quarter of each year and that the outdoor public space performances and the innovative arts programming across the city's public spaces create as the city-wide festival that uses the Gold Coast landscape as the stage for the contemporary arts performances, provides the arts event identity that distinguishes the Gold Coast in the southeast Queensland arts calendar.

The HOTA Gallery's permanent and the temporary exhibition program, creating the visual arts destination that the Gold Coast visitor and the resident who has not previously considered the Gold Coast a serious arts destination discovers in the quality of the international and the Australian art that the gallery presents in the new facilities that the architectural ambition and the collecting resources of the public gallery sustain, provides the visual arts infrastructure that sustains the Gold Coast's claim to the cultural city identity that the HOTA development is building. The gallery's Indigenous art collecting and the First Nations programming, creating the platform for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art of the southeast Queensland region and the national Indigenous art market, provides the cultural depth and the First Nations connection that the arts institution uses to acknowledge the Kombumerri people on whose country the Gold Coast has been built.

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