In the spirit of the gallery’s 1887 founding ethos - art for the people - visitors will be pleased to encounter a number of interactive spaces throughout the gallery.

Visitors are to encouraged to participate in our sketchbook project and meander through the gallery and sketch an artwork, a self-portrait, draw an 18th century marble or try their hand at arranging a still life in our pop-up studio under the shimmering optical backdrop of our Kerrie Poliness Blue Wall Drawing.

Taking the lead from Swiss-German modernist Paul Klee, who famously said ‘A drawing is taking a line for a walk’, the sketchbook project promotes the idea that the act of drawing itself is potentially more valuable than the visual outcome.

Drawings, scribbles, and contemplations of all shapes and sizes are celebrated in the gallery’s sketchbooks.

Klee’s ideas led artists to consider how an artist can see the relationship between the optical and tactile intuitions in their creative process and many of the colourfield painters and abstract expressionists of the 1950s were influenced by his work.

Contemporary artists still reference Klee today, as exhibiting or documenting the process of the creation often becomes as important as the work itself.

Kerrie Poliness’ Blue Wall Drawing #1 is more than a wall drawing. It is also a set of instructions, a performance, and a collaborative piece.

Devised through a series of geometric equations and executed by artists and gallery staff, Blue Wall Drawing #1 was drawn directly onto the wall of the gallery over a number of days in the lead up to the exhibition.

The only qualifications stipulated by the artist required to make the wall drawing was the ability to understand the instructions in the book; the ability to guess half of something and the ability to draw lines with a ruler and balance on a ladder.

The resulting drawing is an optical geometric web of epic proportions, made all the more dramatic by its ephemeral nature (only two drawings may be in existence at any one time).

As Poliness states on the creation of the drawing: “Every guess ‘distorts’ the drawing from appearing as a perfect grid….The guessing results in an ‘original’ drawing, a drawing that has visible characteristics different to any other.” 

In this sense, while the drawing follows the protocols of design or manufacture, the artist pre-empts and harnesses the irregularities of human nature.

It is these mistakes – this dance between the irregular and the regular ­– that make the work unique and beautiful.

The Bendigo Art Gallery’s pop-up studio will be open every day during Collective Vision: 130 Years, until May 28.

The exhibition marks the 130th anniversary of the Bendigo Art Gallery.