A Note from the Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Few visitors will forget the experience of encountering William Kentridge’s video installation I am not me, the horse is not mine on Cockatoo Island in 2008 as part of the 16th Biennale of Sydney. Projected on to walls rich in the traces of Sydney’s colonial and industrial past, Kentridge’s complex and sometimes comical shadow-play, with its cascade of allusions to twentieth-century opera, film and utopian politics, gripped the imaginations of all who saw it. It was therefore a moment of great excitement when, in 2016, the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ long-time supporters Luca and Anita Belgiorno-Nettis came to me with the news of their intention to gift this eight-channel video installation to the Gallery. That act of generosity was the trigger for a conversation that has resulted in the magnificent exhibition which this publication accompanies. Both have been made possible through the support and collaboration of another esteemed patron, Naomi Milgrom AO. A passionate supporter of Kentridge’s work, Naomi has assembled a major collection of his art over the course of more than fifteen years. And it is through loans from this collection and the artist’s studio, as well as the Gallery’s own existing holdings of Kentridge’s works, that we have been able to assemble a presentation of exceptional richness. It is interesting to note just how prominently Australia figures in Kentridge’s distinguished exhibition history. Since first appearing at Sydney’s Annandale Galleries, where his work has been exhibited regularly since 1997, Kentridge has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including major solo presentations at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2004);
143
