Located in a 19th-century factory used to construct the grand organ in the Melbourne Town Hall, it was co-founded in 1976 by composers Warren Burt and Ron Nagorcka, and ran concerts on a near-weekly basis until 1983.
This alternative set of values fostered a highly eclectic and experimental scene involving "a strange mix of Melbourne intelligentsia, music academics, and precocious post-punks".
Earlier, Nagorcka had initiated innovative projects such as the New Improvisers Action Group for Gnostic and Rhythmic Awareness (NIAGGRA) at La Mama Theatre (1972–74) and co-founded the New Music Centre (NMC), a hub for contemporary and electronic musicians.
Upon founding the Centre, Nagorcka and Burt soon handed over coordination to young Latrobe student composer David Chesworth, who organised concert series between 1978 and 1982.
[5] The CHCMC, through its "anyone can do it" ethos, nurtured many young Australian composers, including Paul Schütze, Ernie Althoff,[6] Ros Bandt, David Brown, Rik Rue[7] and Adrian Martin.
[9] "Post-Cagean" composers associated with La Trobe's music department, such as John Crawford and Warren Burt, drew on modernist inspired counter-culture methods when creating pieces for the CHCMC.
Art & Text also featured written contributions from CHCMC stalwarts, including Chesworth, who later said that the journal "started the process of legitimisation" of their ideas, and that "all of a sudden this output of people ... [Taylor] introduced back into the discourse.
Despite these strides, audience attendance began to decline, as did the presence of regular performers, many of whom were away in Europe as members of the Australian contingent sent to the Festival d'automne à Paris.
For these reasons, it compared their output with that of projects based in England at the time, such as Scritti Politti, and the group Red Krayola's collaboration with Art & Language.
The music, thinking and writing that circulated around the centre simultaneously addressed meta-musical concerns about the place of art and the artist within politics and ideology.The National Gallery of Victoria has collected CHCMC-related works,[19][20] and drew on the scene's output in curating the 2013 exhibition Mix Tape 1980s: Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style.