Tim Ross

And by the way, we've got this wide shot of us all sitting here.

In silhouette, there's tiny figures in the corner of this amazing perspective of this room, which is a fabulous gallery and wasn't built as a gallery.

What was it built of?

So from paint factory to... To a... Paint factory.

That's a significant collection.

That's a lot of art.

You display it, but also you loan as well, don't you?

Yeah, the gentle wafting.

Yeah.

You talk so passionately about it, and quite clearly this has become, over your life, a hugely important body of work for you.

I mean, an enterprise.

It's like seeing a fantastic ship in sail, you know what I mean?

It's like the sense of this great collection moving forward through time.

Can I just ask a very basic question, which is what does art, visual art, mean to you?

You bought back a painting that you'd given to someone.

You talk as if there's a reflexive nature in culture here as opposed to Eastern Australia, that, you know, the art, for example, is very often dissident.

It's another voice.

It can be even counterculture.

So is there that, because there is a, how should we say, a sort of duality here, there's West and there's East, am I right in thinking that there's a kind of identity there which is consolidated?

The distance is so great that Western Australia sees itself differently.