Artbank Artworks at Kurraba Apartments_501

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

Inge KING

Constellation, 1977

Sculpture

Steel and enamel paint

#715

Inge King (b. 1915, Berlin – d. 2016, Melbourne) was a German born Australian sculptor and was trained in the classical traditions of sculpture in Germany and in Glasgow, where she lived during the Second World War. After marrying Australian artist Grahame King, the couple settled in Melbourne in 1951. Moving on from her formative training, King brought a new international sensibility to the local sculpture scene: abstraction. In works like Forward surge, at the Victorian Arts Centre, King developed her trademark welded-steel, non-figurative pieces into monumental accomplishments.

Constellation seems to suggest the movement of heavenly bodies in arcs and orbits. In 1979 she said to James Gleeson: "One of my aims in sculpture or in working in steel is movement. I have used movement in various ways, but in recent years I had a particular interest to use movement that is suspended in some fashion or other or, as I often call it, I like to make them fly",

She noted particularly her move toward circular forms was to help create the idea of flight in space. The work may have been created as a maquette for a more ambitious project and shows a balance and tension perfectly resolved.

Dinny Nolan TJAMPITJINPA

Willi Willi, 1987

Print Screenprint

#5249

Respected Papunya Tula artist Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa (b. c.1922 – d. 2011) was a senior custodian for the Warlpiri people and, together with cousins, was a key founding member of the Papunya painting group. His work has had a strong influence on many of his fellow Central and Western Desert artists and in 1981 Tjampitjinpa was responsible, along with Paddy Carroll, for creating the first sand painting ever seen outside of Central Australia.

This is a very good example of Dinny Nolan’s print practice. The print is a three colour screenprint and was made in 1987. The work is a representation of the Willi Rockholes slightly east of Kintore and an important site.

Tim MAGUIRE

Untitled (yellow flower), 1993

Print

Lithograph, printed in colour

#8174

Tim Maguire (b. 1958) is a Melbourne-based artist who works predominantly in painting and printmaking, exploring intersections between the art of the past and contemporary culture. Maguire has experimented with both archaic techniques and current advances in technology - from monoprinting with glass plates to digital printing - and similarly gleans his imagery from a wide range of historical and contemporary sources, manipulating the qualities colour, scale and light. Underpinning Maguire's work since the 1980s has been his fascination with the way the natural world is represented.

In this Untitled work, the title suggests the ubiquity of the image. The flower shape is almost universal and common. Maguire sets the challenge to himself to make it anew.

Jo BERTINI

Shell Cove, 1998

Painting Oil and wax on canvas #9910

Jo Bertini (b. 1964) is a landscape artist who approaches subjects in an almost diaristic way where works represent subjective emotional states and specific travels of the artist. Her works are based on close observation and immersion in a site and range from the Australian landscape to American landscapes. Something underpinning much of her work is the spiritual power of nature.

This work is atmospheric and delicate. Shell Cove is a characteristic early work which shows a simplified drawing of her subject in a limited palette. Shell Cove is a seaside town south of Wollongong and although the blues conjure up the feeling of beach resorts, the blackness suggests a nocturne. Bertini always attempts to represent the spirit of a place rather than exact details.

Bertini was artist-in-residence at Hill End in 2003 and at The Bundanon Trust in 2001.

Nyanu WATSON

Kakalyalya Tjuta, 2011

Painting

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas #13318

Nyanu Watson (b.1951) grew up in Ernabella in South Australia before it became a mission. During the 'Homelands movement', when the Anangu ('people' in Pitjantjatjara language) began to return to their country during the 1970s, Watson too return to her familial country, settling in the Aboriginal community of Kalka in the APY lands. Watson has become known for her distinctive depictions of the various fauna found in the surrounding district where she lives, with a particular authority for the Ngintaka (Lizard), Anumara (Caterpillar), and Kakalyalya (Cockatoo) among other birds.

She uses a combination of loose brushwork and thick layered dotting to create her highly-stylised and appealing creature portraits. Watson says of this work:

This is the country around Kalka. Kalalyalya (Major Mitchell or Pink Cockatoo) are looking around for mai (food). They are eating the seeds and laying eggs. They will have lots of babies.

Lucas DAVIDSON

Death as a Companion to Living, 2017

Photography

Pigment print on paper

#14741

Lucas Davidson (b. 1971) is a Sydney-based artist who works with everyday tools such as digital cameras, computer software, and printers to explore the fluidity of the medium of photography. His works are often expanded into large scale installations that challenge photography’s traditional conventions. Davidson is particularly interested in how digital image has shifted the way we see reality.

Death as a Companion to Living comes from a suite of works that pushes the boundaries of photographic self-portraiture. To create the image, Davidson captures and develops the photograph, then dissolves the photographic emulsion in water, making it a flexible tissue like material. He then manipulates the emulsion, pushing and pulling the material to create a distorted version of the original image, recaptured through photography or film. The curved lines and gaping holes appear more like a topographic map than a portrait. For Davidson, the transparent portrait represents the fluidity between consciousness and unconsciousness and the artist sees the work as "a truer self-portrait than the way I speak, or dress."

Danica FIRULOVIC

White square with border II, 2022

Painting

Oil on canvas

#16581

Danica Firulovic (b. 1987) is an excellent example of contemporary non-objective painting. Her work plays with the tropes of 1970s minimalist painting but adds the expressive gesture of the author in subtle ways. Her works are peaceful and meditative, and using a paired down palette of grey and white she skilfully make shapes appear and recede on the two-dimensional canvas. Firulovic creates work that is “restrained, reserved and quiet” offering a place of calm and contemplation in a world that is so saturated with information, images and meaning.

In this series of Firulovic’s work, there was a decisive move to embrace the raw linen of the canvas, exposing a border; this is the border mentioned in the title of the works. This framing device highlights the philosophical limit of painting, not just the traditional painted surface but also the painting as an object, paint on canvas. The paint is executed in delicate layers, almost like gauze, so that the paint becomes part of the canvas, like a flat stain, which again throws the viewer into a paradox of what is the canvas and what is paint.

Firulovic won the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2018).

Danica FIRULOVIC

White square with border III, 2022

Painting

Oil on canvas

#16582

Danica Firulovic (b. 1987) is an excellent example of contemporary non-objective painting. Her work plays with the tropes of 1970s minimalist painting but adds the expressive gesture of the author in subtle ways. Her works are peaceful and meditative, and using a paired down palette of grey and white she skilfully make shapes appear and recede on the two-dimensional canvas. Firulovic creates work that is “restrained, reserved and quiet” offering a place of calm and contemplation in a world that is so saturated with information, images and meaning.

In this series of Firulovic’s work, there was a decisive move to embrace the raw linen of the canvas, exposing a border; this is the border mentioned in the title of the works. This framing device highlights the philosophical limit of painting, not just the traditional painted surface but also the painting as an object, paint on canvas. The paint is executed in delicate layers, almost like gauze, so that the paint becomes part of the canvas, like a flat stain, which again throws the viewer into a paradox of what is the canvas and what is paint.

Firulovic won the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2018).

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!