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);

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2006); Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne (2012); and a touring exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2016).

The current Sydney exhibition is unique because its checklist and design have been especially conceived by the artist to draw connections between what may seem like disparate aspects of his practice: from his engagement with opera to his interest in early cinema, from his inimitable animated drawings to sculpture and works on paper. Installed in a completely remodelled layout |of the John Kaldor Family Galleries, the exhibition will allow viewers to encounter works executed over the course of more than two decades, and to trace tangents and developments in thought and form.

I am deeply grateful to Sabine Theunissen (a frequent collaborator with William on the design of his exhibitions and opera productions) and studio manager Anne McIlleron for their commitment and creativity in devising such an innovative exhibition. And also to Jane Taylor, who developed this publication with William, and Naomi Milgrom AO, who was responsible for nurturing it into being.

For the works here at the Gallery, I reiterate my thanks to Luca and Anita Belgiorno-Nettis for gifting the beguiling and multilayered centrepiece of the exhibition, and also acknowledge Ruth Faerber, for her gift of Walking man (2000), and Gretel Packer, for the long-term loan of Second-hand reading (2013), both of which make important contributions to the exhibition.

I thank everyone at the Gallery who contributed to the realisation of this exhibition – especially Nicholas Chambers, Danielle Earp and Belqis Youssofzay. I also acknowledge the important contribution of Michele Cooper-Hede, Curator of the Naomi Milgrom AO Collection.

My sincere appreciation goes to Naomi Milgrom AO whose friendship with William and commitment to his work have been instrumental in shaping this exhibition. It truly would not have been possible to stage an exhibition of this amplitude without Naomi’s extraordinary collection and the generous support that has been provided through the Naomi Milgrom Foundation.

I can only conclude by thanking William himself – for the loans from his studio and, moreover, for the thoughtfulness and inventiveness with which he approached this exhibition and publication. His is art of the kind that I and all my colleagues love to see and share with our public at the Art Gallery of New South Wales: imaginative, humane, experimental, visionary, and deeply interested in the issues of our time. P

—Michael Brand, Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales