Artbank - Alinga

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 10,000 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

Ginger Riley MUNDUWALAWALA

Ngak Ngak (White-breasted Sea Eagle), 1997

Ginger Riley Munduwalawala (c.1937-2002) was born in Mara country on the western aspect of the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory. He went to school at the Roper River Mission, which was later handed over to the to the local community and is now called the Ngukurr Aboriginal Community. Riley worked as a stockman and labourer from the 1950s before returning to Ngukurr in the late 1970s and began to paint the stories of his country in his early 50s. Riley’s distinctive figurative paintings are highly personal explorations of site of spiritual significane.

This screenprint 'Ngak Ngak' depicts the white-breasted sea eagle who flew across the mouth of the Limmen Bight River forming the tiny island called Yumunkuni (Beatrice Island) and the sacred 'liver' tree, which takes its name from the shark who went into the land and gave his liver to create these trees.

MeganKEATING

Artist Megan Keating (b.1971, Sydney) is interested in paintings, drawings and installations, and within that context, the history of painting and its effects. Keating is currently Associate Professor and head of the School of Creative Arts and Media at the University of Tasmania.

In this triptych Keeting uses objects from nature - a Banksia seedpod, a branch, a mollusc shell - as the players on her stage, suspended across an ethereal backdrop. The subject matter appears neither living nor dead. Building on this idea, Keating writes, "Purgatory is the in-between space that shelters intangible notions such as fate, destiny and desire; it has no structure, no shape nor a dimension. It is however the temporal resting ground before the void of the unknown, at once full of potential and as empty as a black hole. It is the space in which the imagination and the narrative impulse run free. The objects that are suspended here are the guardians of everything and nothing. They are the souvenirs of what has been and what is to come.’

GeoffreyRICARDO

Geoffrey Ricardo (b.1964 Melbourne) is an artist whose practice centres largely on monochromatic and evocative sculpture and printmaking. Animals have often featured in Ricardo’s work, usually with a touch of anthropomorphism giving them a humorous edge.

Robert Nelson, writing for the Print Council for Australia penned this poem about Richardo’s Dalmatian:

‘Consider the lustiest canine of art: Every spot on the dog is turned into a heart. With a tail in the air and a hock to the rear, She goes huffing a kind of internalized cheer. Her demeanor is business-like, full of ambitionHer trotting is willfully charged with a missionAnd if she looks sideways, it’s only to monitor Those who might fondly but idly look on at her. Nothing distracts her. Her zeal is ahead. You have witnessed a dog with a heart in her head.’

ReinholdINKAMALA

Lenie NAMATJIRA Myra AH CHEE

Ivy

PAREROULTJA

West 'McDonald's' Ranges, 2016 Drawing Watercolour on card #14617 - #14621

Reinhold Inkamala, Lenie Namatjira, Myra Ah Chee and Ivy Pareroultja are practitioners of the ‘Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Artists’, also home to the ‘Namatjira watercolour artists’. This body of work, produced under the mentorship of artist Tony Albert and created on fast food packaging, reclaims the West MacDonnell Ranges by titling the works ‘West McDonald’s’ Ranges.’ The artists note of their working with the traditional Hermannsburg watercolour style, “There are different types of aliens in our own country. Real aliens –Alice Springs is a UFO hotspot for sightings and the CIA establishment out here – it is very spooky and mysterious. Walberlla (white people) are Aliens who came to this country and because they don’t know about it they are destroying the landscape with mining and industry. Our culture is abducted and our human rights are abused. Our healthy land gave us healthy food, now we have fast food and an unhealthy life. So, we have abducted our own work to show new things.”

Ian W. Abdulla (b.1947 in Marraylands S.A) called himself a ‘Riverland Nunga’ as a way to take account of his mixed heritage: his mother was a Ngarridjeri woman and his father Afghan. This work was created as part of a folio of 12 prints by First Nations artists commissioned by the Olympic Arts Festival of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games; in association with Studio One Inc. National Print Workshop, Canberra, along with a host of influential Contemporary Indigenous artists.

In this work, Abdulla’s trademark naïve painting style is translated into print format. The title 'Way to go!' depicts the Australian swimmer Kieren Perkins after his victory in the 1500m freestyle at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Combining nostalgia and history, 'Way to go!' exemplifies Abulla’s standing as Artists as social historian and within a growing tradition of First Nations contemporary artists who are responding to Australian sport as an arena in which Australian national narratives play out.

LillyKARADADA

Wandjina, 2000 Painting Synthetic polymer paint on bark #10440

Lily Karadada was born in her father's country, Woomban-go-wangoorr, around the Prince Regent River in the East Kimberley in around 1935. Her language group is Wunambal. She belongs to the Jirrengger (owlet nightjar bird) moiety and her specific totems are the turkey, possum and white cockatoo. Wandjina, also written Wanjina and Wondjina and also known as Gulingi, are cloud and rain spirits. To the First Nations people who call the Kimberley area home, the Wandjina is the supreme Creator and a symbol of fertility and rain. Their ancestors have been painting Wandjina (also spelled wanjina) and Gyorn Gyorn (also called Gwion Gwion) figures in rock art sites scattered throughout the western Kimberley for millennia.

BlueyGUNJINJI

A Kunwinjku/Murnwarri speaking artist, Bluey Ilkarr Gunjinji (b. c 1925, Western Arnhem Land, NT- d. 1990s) actively painted barks from around 1975, and his most common subject was namarnkol (or the silver barramundi) that he usually depicted with waterlilies. Gunjinji worked through Injalak Arts & Crafts Gunbalanya (Oenpelli) and with the community at Minjilang on Croker Island. This is a powerful and sacred work. The artist has depicted Namaralto, the evil magician, out hunting with his young wife. The two giants live deep in the swamp country which is avoided by Aboriginal people. It is believed Namaralto can take men’s spirits and sever their link with the Dreaming. Gunjinji’s work can be found in the collections of the Australian Museum, Sydney and The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, USA. Exhibitions include in 1984, the First National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin and in 1986, the Third National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, also at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

FredTJAKAMARRA

Fred Tjakamarra (b. 1926 – 2006) was an elder statesman in the Warlayirti Artists community based in Balgo on the edge of the Great Sandy and Tanami Deserts in northern Western Australia. His country is located south of Halls Creek near Lappi Lappi (Hidden Basin) and is associated with rainmaking ceremonies. 'Yuntu' depicts a water dreaming site where Tjakamarra and his people would perform ceremonies to encourage rainfall and more specifically clouds and what the artist called 'frozen rain'.

Tjakamarra lived a traditional lifestyle for much of his life living on Warlpairi Country. He recalls his first experience when he saw stockmen droving cattle using camels on route to Alice Springs.

MaryNAKAMARRA

Yalka Tjukurrpa (Bush Onion) - Murini, 2016

Drawing Chalk on paper #14564 & 14565

Born in 1974 at Kakalipu (West Papunya), Mary Roberts Nakamarra was taught how to paint by her father Murphy Roberts Tjupurrula, one of the most respected senior lawmen in the Papunya community and also a Lutheran pastor. With these works, Nakamarra has depicted designs associated with Yalka Tjukurrpa (Bush Onion Dreaming) at Murini, West of Haasts Bluff, near the sacred site of Winparrku. The Yalka is a traditional bush food that may be eaten raw or cooked after removing the hard casing. The women would perform a traditional ceremony in honour of the Bush Onion where they dance and paint their breast, chest and forearms in ceremonial body designs. They also decorate their bodies with feathers and dance with ceremonial objects such as nulla nullas (ceremonial dancing baton).

JohnMURRAY

Flight, 2013 Painting Synthetic polymer paint on canvas #13801

John Murray is a Girramay man who was born in 1979 in the Murray Upper Area of Queensland. Murray, a neuro-diverse artist who also experiences physical disabilities uses his art practice as a form of expression and to better communicate his ideas and thoughts to his community and audience. He has been painting since 2008 and his work portrays his experiences from fishing, camping and living in a rainforest to watching sports - like the Bathurst Car Racing - on television.

Murray, is a Girramay traditional owner, who has been taught the stories from the elders of his community which Murray translates in his particular style, for example 'Flight' which portrays the outlined forms of two birdlike creatures next to two trees over a gestural background of warm colour tones.

Michelle Hamer (b. Melbourne in 1975) combines the traditional medium of handstitched tapestry with a characteristic dark sense of humour to re-evaluate the relationship between contemporary culture and pervasive messaging.

In this series Hamer works in her trademark medium of handstitched tapestry. This historic and labour intensive technique provides a medium for contemporary society to reassess the digitalisation of everyday imagery. The craft of individually stitching each pixel, required by tapestrying, slows down the information, bringing with it further deviation to the signs original intention. This contradiction challenges the fleeting,almost subliminal messages of both the original sign and the artwork. Hamer’s work invites the viewer to slow down and consciously process the barrage of information we experience unknowingly in our day to day lives.

Michelle Hamer (b. Melbourne in 1975) combines the traditional medium of handstitched tapestry with a characteristic dark sense of humour to re-evaluate the relationship between contemporary culture and pervasive messaging.

In this series Hamer works in her trademark medium of handstitched tapestry. This historic and labour intensive technique provides a medium for contemporary society to reassess the digitalisation of everyday imagery. The craft of individually stitching each pixel, required by tapestrying, slows down the information, bringing with it further deviation to the signs original intention. This contradiction challenges the fleeting,almost subliminal messages of both the original sign and the artwork. Hamer’s work invites the viewer to slow down and consciously process the barrage of information we experience unknowingly in our day to day lives.

MichelleHAMER

MarianDREW

Marian Drew (b 1960) is an acclaimed Australian photographer whose practice is defined by innovation and exploration of photo-media. She often explores thematic dualities: natural and artificial, contemporary and historic, life and death, and light and dark in her very visceral photographic works. This image, apparently abstract, in fact shows the artists body moving swiftly across the surface of a painted backdrop. She continues: ‘I’ve been reading about Einstein’s theory of relativity and how space and time are inseparable and relative to the speed of the viewer. All these ideas appear to find little support in perceptual experience. We move fast but not fast enough. However, the fact remains that our perceptual experience is due to a particular conceptual viewpoint or to the measurement apparatus, which one chooses to employ … I make photographs and look at what I think about the inter-relatedness of space, time and light as matter and energy. I hope to generate alternative images of ourselves which are responses to historical contexts in photography and new understanding of the physical sciences.’

Her art work is held in collections that include the John Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego, National Gallery of Australia, Fonds National D’Art Contemporain (FNAC), Paris, France, Art Gallery of South Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Monash Gallery of Art, Queensland University Art Museum, Murdoch University and Artbank.

Simryn GILL

A Small Town at the Turn of the Century #22, 1999-2000

Photography Type C photograph #13245

Size (cm): 58h x 58w x 35d

Simryn Gill (b 1959, Singapore) is an artist who works between Sydney, Australia and Port Dickerson, Malaysia. Her works often considers questions of place and history and how they might intersect with personal and collective experience.

'A Small Town at The Turn of The 20th Century' consists of a series of photographs of residents of the small town, intentionally unnamed, in which Gill was raised and features them in their homes and at the local club. Where photographic portraits usually highlight the subject’s faces, Gill has chosen to obscure them with assorted fruits such oranges and bananas. The intention is not satire but an attempt to downplay the individual in favour of the universal. The is a warmth to the images in which two annonomous friends share not only a drink but sense of place.

Throughout her career, Gill has presented her art at several significant events, including Germany's Documenta art show and the Venice Biennale, and is one of Australia's leading contemporary artists.

ChrisFORTESCUE

Rectified Searches: Road, Chris, Fog Series Chris 01, 2007 Chris 09, 2007 Chris 12, 2007

Chris Fortescue works across the genres of sound, installation, animation, web-based art and photography. To produce these image, Fortescue entered keywords, in this case the name 'Chris', into internet search engines to retrieve hundreds of thumbnail images - a process he refers to as "image mining". The thumbnails, typically low quality, are then manipulated to form images with a grainy, moody patina. The artist stated: "The images might be considered to be genre pictures in a sense, because of their adherence to conventional notions of landscape and portraiture. I've chosen them because they seem to be highly charged at the same time as being evacuated of meaning."

StuartRINGHOLT

Circles Passing (Set A), 2007

Photography

Photographic collage on paper #13314 - #13317

Stuart Ringholt (b. 1971, Perth) creates interventions, performances, sculptures, photographs and events that disrupt expectations of the everyday, from subtle collages imagery to nude art tours and happenings.

This series, Circles Passing, uses collected material to arrange and reorder otherwise disparate images. With a raw honesty and sense of whimsy drawn from his rich personal experiences, Ringholt explores social constructions of ‘normalcy’, and the very nature of the human condition.

IanBROWNE

Untitled (Series), 1986 Photography Colour photograph #5669 - #5672

The photographic work by artist Ian Browne is constructed by documenting industrial sites and altering perspective to deliver images that speak of not only the detritus we find in the contemporary urban landscape, but also of geometry and pattern making.

Like celebrated artists Geoff Kleem and Robert Owen, working in similar ways around the same era, Browne has translated some of the concerns of minimalist painting into photographic terms. His use of decaying interiors and exterior sites extends the minimalist celebration of industrial materials and simple geometries, updating and reinvigorating the ideas on to flat planes through the medium on photography.

KatieBRECKON

Katie Breckon deals with themes of memory and human identity through belongings. This work, part of a series titled 'Set This House In Order', saw Breckon archive the contents and and spaces of her family home. Documenting the objects from all angles, Breckon references the way forensic scientists and archaeologists gather evidence, paying attention to every mark on every surface. The artist states: "The intention of this project is to document objects from my family home in order to create an accurate, archival copy of the home’s original contents, simultaneously preserving the personal memories and sentimental value attached to them."

KenzeePATTERSON

CP28WF2, 2008 DTV-5101, 2008 TX-21PS72AQ, 2008 CR5A, 2008 Photography Digital Type C photograph #12235 - #12238

Sydney artist Kenzee Patterson's practice is truly interdisciplinary, incorporating sculpture, photography, video, performance, installation, painting and drawing. This body of work is part of a rich series of meticulous drawings that focus on technology and materials from times past and quickly passing. This is from a series of photographs documenting the now obselete CRT television, with its flash of white as it was turned off for the last time.

GREEDY HEN

Greedy Hen is the collaborative duo Katherine Brickman (b. 1981) and Kate Mitchell (b. 1982). Their work is multi-disciplinary covering a wide range of activities including graphic art (including album covers and tour posters), collages and works on paper, video clips and animation. Greedy Hen also make art works that utilise the concept of the Super Fiction, in part a valorisation of the ethos of the amateur, but also a fictionalising of the public narrative of mainstream media.

This work New Colours, is a whimsical and self referential piece. It is an illustration of pencils, the “new colours”, as if the illustrators have just gone to the art supply shop. It is a wonderfully dark and funny work which absolutely characterises the duos approach. They are “new colours” because instead of the normal chromium green or red oxide each pencil has a colour name grounded in real life knowledge of the material world. The work is like a piece of concrete poetry: stink eye pink; devon sandwich; pollen asthmatic; smokey sweater green; double denim. These are all colours that are funny because, as they say, they are so true.

As a design studio, their work has graced the covers of many band’s albums, tour posters, and film clips, including work for Cloud Control, Ariel Pink, Florence + The Machine, Animal Collective, Washington, Bill Callahan (Smog) and The Middle East. The Waifs, Washington and Josh Pyke.

Jennifer KNGWARREYE

Anularra (Pencil Yam Dreaming), 2021 Painting Acrylic on linen #16525

Size (cm): 97h x 97w x 55d

Jennifer Purvis Kngwarreye (b. 1974) is the daughter of senior Utopian law man, Greeny Purvis Petyarre and Kathleen Purvis Kemarre. Jennifer, the youngest in the family, has three older sisters, Judy, Maureen and Jedda Purvis. The family come from the Utopia region in Central Australia and are from the Anmatyerre language group. Jennifer comes from a region well known for producing some of the most highly collectable and well known Aboriginal artists, including her aunt, the famous, Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

This represents the dreaming of the Pencil Yam or Anularra. Nominally the work represents the root systems and tubers of the yam the work is an expression of cultural connections to family and the land. The work is a form of singing in the relationship between the community and the life affirming importance of the yam to the diet of people in Utopia.

Izabela Pluta’s work is concerned with our experience of place, the effects of time and how the photographic image operates as a vehicle for witnessing various states of ruin. Various prefabricated ruins dating back to 18th-century England are depicted in Pluta’s series ‘Study for a sham ruin’. The images are paired with a mirror-image that appears or conceals itself through a camouflage of white acrylic. Collectively, the works in this series explore temporal depth, illusion, artifice and spatial distance through the vicarious experience offered by these portals into the past.

SallyMORGAN

Sally Morgan (b.1951) is a well-known Aboriginal artist and writer from the Palku people of the Pilbara. Morgan's artworks are concerned with Aboriginal heritage and spirituality and in these vibrant screenprints, depicts affirmative stories of Aboriginal life, noting: "In all my work I try to imbue the Aboriginal Spirit, a spirit which is present all over Australia, in cities, towns and the outback. I am always looking at the way things might have been prior to 1788." Morgan's first book 'My Place' (1987), which became a national bestseller, is a story about her childhood and about growing up in Perth, including the discovery of her Aboriginal identity at the age of fifteen, as well as looking the persistence of racism in contemporary Australian society more broadly. Morgan is the Director of the Centre for Indigenous History and Arts at The University of Western Australia in Perth, where she continues to write and make work.

LorraineBIGGS

Pindan Pond I, II, III, 2000

Drawing Pastel chalk on paper #10469

Perth-born artist Lorraine Biggs made these works from memory after spending time in the Pilbara region in the mid-north of Western Australia. The scenes depicted in ‘Pindan Pond I, II, III’ do not depict specific locations, and appear almost lunar in their barren otherworldliness. The earth is a rich red, and a still, reflective pool is depicted at the centre of each composition. Permanent pools in the Pilbara region are often sacred places and important local landmarks. Biggs has been living in Tasmania since the early 1990s and exhibits regularly throughout Australia. She works across painting, drawing, sculpture and photography.

Caring for your collection

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.

Artbank Sydney,

Tom Ferguson

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