Artbank Artwork at Kurraba Apartments_402

Introduction to Artbank

Artbank is a unique Government artist support and access initiative. For over 40 years we have supported thousands of Australian artists, building an impressive collection of over 11,000 artworks. Artbank artworks enrich government, business and residential spaces, exposing a wide variety of people to contemporary Australian art.

The Artbank collection was founded with an endowment of 600 artworks from the National Collection (now the National Gallery of Australia) and has since grown to include more than 10,000 works spanning media including painting, sculpture, video and photography.

Through leasing works to individuals, companies and governments, Artbank lives up to its policy principle of promoting broad access to Australian contemporary art. Through our leasing of artworks to Australian embassies and overseas posts, we provide access to Australian contemporary art in approximately 70 countries across the globe.

Artbank has similarities with other collecting institutions in how we undertake aspects of the business, but we are very different in both why we collect artwork and how we promote Australian art to stakeholders, clients and the public. For the broader community, we make Australian contemporary art accessible in ways other collecting institutions cannot.

With Artbank artworks in workplaces and other public and private places around Australia and the world, we enable the broader community to access some of the best examples of Australian contemporary art.

This allows for a different, more everyday type of engagement with artworks than a gallery or museum exhibition offers. By displaying works in offices, government buildings and homes, we present artworks to many who would never visit a public or private gallery, breaking down traditional barriers to this art form.

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Artbank Sydney, photo Tom Ferguson

Director’s Message

Artbank is delighted to bring a refreshed selection of works to the walls of our clients.

As we enter our fifth decade, we are determined to continue managing this unique government program that supports contemporary Australian artists through acquiring their works and making them available in office and residential spaces.

We hope these works will help to enliven the workplace and serve as a reminder of the immense diversity and talent of Australia’s contemporary visual artists. We hope that they will spark conversations, stimulate creativity and build morale.

Zoë Rodriguez Director, Artbank

Artbank Sydney, photo Tom Ferguson

Joel ELENBERG

Mask, 1979

Sculpture

Black Belgian marble #46

Joel Elenberg (b. 1948 - d. 1980) first carved marble sculptures in the early 1970s. Later that decade, he travelled to Carrara in Italy to learn traditional carving techniques. Having moved away from a much more expressive start in painting, Elenberg maintained his interest in the themes of alienation, isolation, remoteness and relativity.

By the time 'Mask' was created, his work had translated into elegant pieces bearing the powerful influence of modernist master, Brancusi. Elenberg's early death is considered to have robbed Australia of an artist who, despite his considerable achievement, had not yet reached the peak of his career. A pendant piece of this work is held by the Art Gallery of NSW and was painted as part of the decor of Brett Whiteley's Lavender Bay home.

Brett WHITELEY

Fruit dove, 1980

Print

Linocut #2610

Brett Whiteley (b. 1939 – d. 1992) is one of Australia's best known and most controversial twentieth century artists. Having won the Italian Government Travelling Scholarhip in 1959, Whiteley worked and studied in London in his early twenties. He then went to work in New York on a Harkness Fellowship. Returning to Sydney in 1969, Whiteley moved to Lavender Bay and became involved in the Yellow House artists’ collective in Kings Cross. Whiteley's lyrical expressionism and precise draughtsmanship placed him at the forefront of avant-garde practice. Best known for his large mixed media canvases and drawings, his prints can be found throughout the major periods and directional changes of his career.

This print is from the Lavender Bay period and is an image of a fruit dove in a fig tree (still extant) as seen from Whiteley’s house, in what is now called Wendy Whiteley’s garden. It is a quintessential Sydney image, and the fruit dove is a colourful pidgeon like bird that exists mainly in trees. It is an important disperser of seeds.

John TURTON

Aerial Descent, 1984

Painting

Oil on canvas #2918

John Turton was born in 1954 in Western Australia. He studied at Claremont Technical College, obtaining his Diploma of Fine Arts in 1973. The following year he went on to complete an Associate of Fine Art at the Western Australian Institute of Technology and in 1979, a Bachelor of Art, also at WAIT. The artist settled in Brisbane in 1983.

Turton has for many years taught watercolour painting in various Brisbane art institutions but is best known for his mainly semi-abstract expressionist paintings in oil, with a focus on landscape as ‘design’.

With the advent of drones this aerial image is becoming more and more prevalent. However there is still a strangeness and innovation to this painting. It offers another view of the Australian landscape which on one hand feels familiar but also strange.

Kevin LINCOLN

Still Life/Large Shell, 1983

Painting Oil on canvas

#2961

Kevin Lincoln (b. 1941 Hobart, TAS) is one of Australia’s most prolific and well known painters. He is an artist who has explored and made contemporary traditional genres: particularly still life, portraiture and interiors. His sensitive consideration of these subjects has emphasised modesty, restraint and natural beauty. Formally what characterises his work are clear, contoured shapes that sit in large expanses of (abstract) open space. The works move from the amorphous and abstract to tight detail.

The work is often connected to more eastern approaches to composition and form. Lincoln is influenced by Asian aesthetics and also collects Japanese pottery. Items from this collection have appeared frequently in his works and this work is no exception. The titular shell is abstracted to almost become an amalgam of nature and the vessel.

In 2015 The Art Gallery of Ballarat held the highly regarded survey exhibition Kevin Lincoln: The Eye’s Mind. The exhibition featured a diverse range of work from over 25 years of the critically acclaimed artist’s career. A comprehensive exhibition catalogue accompanied the exhibition and the major monograph, Kevin Lincoln: Art and Life, written by Hendrik Kolenberg, was published in 2006.

Mitsuo SHOJI

Horizon Work, c.1984

Ceramics

Stoneware, slip inlay, gold and silver leaf

#4133

Mitsuo Shoji (b.1946 in Osaka) studied painting, sculpture, arts and design in Osaka and Kyoto. In 1973 he received his Master of Fine Arts from the Kyoto City University of Arts. He took up an appointment at Sydney College of the Arts in 1978, where he remains today, now as Senior Lecturer in Ceramics, Object Arts and Design. Shoji is one of Australia’s foremost ceramists. As Eugenie Keefer Bell has written, ‘Shoji's work, like that of a number of Japanese ceramicists, encompasses both functional and sculptural objects, united in an approach to surface decoration.’ His work within the area of ceramics is diverse. It ranges from functional design ware to sculptural objects and experimental work. His main concern is to research the traditions in the ceramic medium and explore this in his own work. He also experiments in new aspects of ceramics and developing new techniques in ceramic paintings.

Shoji has participated in numerous solo and group exhibition since 1970. They include Australian Decorative Art in the Past Ten Years held at the National Gallery of Australia in 1984 and Australian Contemporary Ceramics Exhibition, Faenza Concorso International Ceramics Exhibition held at in Faenza in Italy in 1995. Famously Shoji teamed up with his great friend, internationally renowned chef Tetsuya Wakuda in creating platters for special dishes at the latter’s Sydney restaurant.

Lenton PARR

Scorpio K, 1987

Sculpture

Steel and enamel paint

#5225

Lenton Parr (b. 1924 – d. 2003) is one of Australia’s most notable modernist sculptors. In 1954 Parr travelled to England to work with the famous British sculptor Henry Moore. It was during this time that Parr decided to use steel in his sculptures (possibly the first sculptor in Australia to do so). Parr's sculptures are abstract geometric steel sculptures - an elegant interplay between space and line. Curved, straight and angled planes seem to deny the hardness and weight of the steel from which they are made. This lyrical sculpture Scorpio K, is conceived on a horizontal axis. Arcs of steel curve through space creating a sense of rhythm and movement. The work, even though small in scale, is classically self-sufficient and well composed.

Parr held the positions of Head of sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Director of the Victorian College of the Arts. He was awarded an Order of Australia in 1978 for his services to the arts and sculpture.

Bronwyn OLIVER

Tress, 1992

Sculpture Copper #7985

Bronwyn Oliver (1959-2006) was a celebrated Australian sculptor whose work features organic forms made from woven copper. The intricate patterns and curved conical shapes are reminiscent of ancient Celtic wire work as well as modernism. The work always seems part natural part cultural, like something found during an archaeological dig or a fossilised sea creature from the ocean floor.

The artist described the intention behind her intriguing forms, as follows: "I am trying to create life...life in the sense of a kind of force, a presence, an energy in my objects that human beings can respond to on the level of soul or spirit... I think about sculpture as a kind of physical poetry."

Tress plays on the imagery of the pony tail, both animal and human. From Samson to the school yard hair tresses have had a powerful charge. Here the Tress is made in copper and monumentalised. It has moved from the human scale to something more iconic and sacred.

David RALPH

Resting Place, 1999

David Ralph is considered on of Australia’s most important figurative painters. He worked in London for sometime and also studied at the Leipzig School of Art. His practice is on the cutting edge of contemporary figuration. His work often situates the figure in an urban and modern environment.

This work comes from a series called Transitional Space. The spaces he looks at (foyers, transit ways, transport hubs, car parks) are often what Marc Auge has termed non-places, places uncoupled form the normal run of things and often dehumanising. Ralph takes on this theory and suggests that it is in their very strangeness that spaces can be reclaimed as poetry as “passage, seductive, mysterious or even dangerous.”

Painting Oil on canvas #10149

CaitlinREID

Untitled (Smoke Drawing), 2000

Drawing

Soot, pencil on paper

#10392

#10393

Caitlin Reid (b. 1968, Elgin, Scotland) migrated to Australia, Reid and completed her Bachelor in Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art in 1988. Her work is very experimental and on the cutting edge of drawing and painting practice.

In these Untitled (Smoke Drawing) the artist has drawn with fire. Reid has said of her work: ‘in my drawings I use the flame of a candle as my tool. I am drawn by the flame, captivated by its fluidity and other intangible qualities. Being able to capture and manipulate the soot of a candle is a truly meditative action. Using the form of my body as a template I smoke its impression onto the page The effect of ones life experiences leaves a similar trace on the body.

These particular drawings belong with a series of 11 drawings that were part of my exhibition Placebo shown at Soapbox gallery in July 2000. My concern in this work is to highlight the potential for change that exists in our body and life in general ... I believe the ability to transform ourselves to be the greatest challenge. The future is up to us.’

G.W. BOT

Garden: Mother, 2001 Print

Linocut #10626

G.W. Bot began making linocuts at school in London. In much of her work she employs a v-shaped gouge and fine burin to make repetitive cuts that are balanced with bold forms made by a curved gouge and chisels. In the detailed working of fragmented marks and patterning, the artist has created a personal calligraphic language. Thematically Bot mines a religious and personal symbology that often refers to physical and metaphysical journeys, mourning and loss. Her images are constructed of layers of weaving lines with an extraordinarily fine detail; their complexity resulting from her technical experimentation with the surface.

JulianMEAGHER

Stainless Steel Tap - Study, 2007

Yellow Cord - Study, 2008

Trolley Wheel - Study, 2007

Painting

Oil on Belgian linen

#12188

#12189

#12187

Julian Meagher's 'Scrub Series', 2008, took the operating theatre as subject, inspired by his studies and brief career working as a doctor before turning to art full time. Overlooked features of the theatre - electrical cords, wheels and taps - are depicted in formal studies where Meagher's classical training in painting becomes apparent. His process of removing and repainting layers mirrors the sterilization processes in theatre. The result has been described as a kind of "dirty romantic realism". These works consider modes of seeing: how does a doctor, a scientist, or a painter 'see' and is it different to everyday' looking?

Malaluba GUMANA

Dhatam - waterlily, 2012

Sculpture

Natural earth pigments and pigments on wood #13320

Artist Malaluba Gumana (b. 1952) paints on bark and memorial poles. She lived in the Gangan homeland of the Blue Mud Bay region in northeast Arnhem Land. She is an artist with Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre[7] in Yirrkala, an Indigenous community-controlled art centre of northeast Arnhem Land.

Her complex and fluid paintings frequently refer to the story of the all-powerful Rainbow Serpent or wititj (olive python) as it travels through her mother's Gålpu clan lands. She mainly represents the Gålpu clan designs of dhatam (water lily), djari (rainbow), djayku (file snake) and wititj (olive python), applying the technique of marwat (cross-hatching) using a finely controlled hair brush. This pole focuses on the winding water lily moving up the pole.

Kirra JAMISON

Your Troubles All Across the Sea They'll Stay, 2008

Painting

Synthetic polymer paint and pen on canvas #13946

Kirra Jamison (b. 1982) is a conceptual painter. She cultivates ideas, initial kernels of intuition which germinate into lines, forms and patterns that branch and weave and interlay the picture plane with snatches of narrative. Floating amongst the fragments of decorative motif and patterning, vignettes of everyday experience emerge and inveigle the viewer with abundant possibilities of meaning.

Your Troubles All Across the Sea uses the motif of the tall ship, the piratical image par excellence, the most Romantic of adventurous vessels. There is a dream like feeling as the sails are replaced by filigree. Her painted surfaces freely employ a wide range of expressive techniques, combining found and decorative elements with individual gesture to produce seductively unsettling and unnatural fusions

Jamison is the recipient of the Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship (2007), and several university awards for academic excellence. She exhibits regularly in solo and group exhibitions, and her work is represented in private and corporate collections, including that of the Mater Hospital in Brisbane.

Gift of Catherine Dixon 2014. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Marion BORGELT

Liquid Light: 76 Degrees, 2013

Painting

Synthetic polymer paint on linen; timber, steel pins

#14471

Marion Borgelt (b. 1954) is a leading Australian abstractionist. Her work draws inspiration from universal themes such as life cycles, cosmology, optics and phenomenology to create highly crafted, visually spectacular works. Through painting and sculpture she explores large themes through stylised motifs such as the moon, the sun, water and light.

This work comes from the broader Liquid Light Series which began in 2004 and is ongoing. This series involves a cut surface that is twisted and pinned and reveals the colour beneath. The amount of colour shown changes as you move and creates an optical effect of movement and pulse.

Borgelt won the Peter Brown Memorial Travelling Art Scholarship for study in New York (1979–80) and a fellowship from the French Government for living and working in Paris in 1989, where she consequently spent eight years. Additionally, in 1996, Borgelt was the first Australian artist awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Art Fellowship.

Gift of the artist 2016. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Tay HAGGARTY

Sun on Bare Back, 2021

Sculpture

Acrylic mirror, socks, wooden door blank #16535

Tay Haggarty (b. 1994) explores how reductive forms can be used as an open field to reflect upon personal and shared experience. These investigations take the form of collaborations, performances, videos, installations and sculpture.

Haggarty uses industrial and ready-made materials that, when arranged within a space, heighten precarious elements through tension and balance. Their work is often minimal and site specific. A concern that recurs in Haggarty’s work is the practise of care; their work wishes to foster an attention and kindness towards gender and difference.

‘Sun on Bare Back’ explores the shared sensation of warmth. The materiality in the work aims to articulate a recurring daydream of going on a bush walk and feeling the warmth of the sun on a hiker's bare back, operating as a glowing beacon of hope.

Haggarty was the 2019 recipient of the Jeremy Hynes Award.

Caring for your collection

Follow these tips

In welcoming Artbank works into your space, follow these tips on looking after them for us;

• Advise any cleaning staff to take great care when cleaning areas around artworks.

• Contact your consultant if a work needs maintenance like dusting or cleaning.

• Please ensure the artworks remain untouched and left where they were installed.

• If you need the artworks moved – just call us! We will arrange this straight away for you.

• If you notice damage to any work let us know straight away so we can save the artwork.

Telephone: 1800 251 651

Artbank

Sydney enquiries@ artbank.gov.au

1800 251 651 or +61 2 9697 6000

By appointment (Monday – Friday)

222 Young Street Waterloo NSW 2017

PO Box 409

Surry Hills NSW 2010

Contact Artbank

Artbank

Melbourne enquiries@ artbank.gov.au

1800 251 651

By appointment (Monday – Friday)

18—24 Down Street

Collingwood

VIC 3066

PO Box 1535

Collingwood VIC 3066

Artbank

Perth enquiries@ artbank.gov.au

1800 251 651

Mezzanine Level

Hyatt Regency Perth

Level 1

99 Adelaide Terrace

Perth WA 6000

PO Box 409

Surry Hills NSW 2010

Artbank acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia.

Yaltangki, Malpa Wiru (Good Friends) , 2015.

page: Artbank Sydney, photo Tom Ferguson

Get in touch with an Artbank Consultant today and help support the Australian contemporary artists of tomorrow!