ARTBANK_20/20: Shared Visions. 40 Years of Australian Contemporary Art

20/20: shared visions

1980 – 2020

20/20: shared visions

November 2020 – March 2021

Myra Ah Chee

David McDiarmid

Ian W. Abdulla

Lenie Namatjira

Khadim Ali

Nellie Nambayana

Richard Bell

Maureen Poulson Napangardi

Gordon Bennett

Nasim Nasr

Robert Campbell Jnr

Jimmy Njiminjuma

Barbara Cleveland

Bronwyn Oliver

Richard Crichton

Mary Katatjuku Pan

Isabel Davies

Ivy Pareroultja

Linda Dement

Thom Roberts

Walter Ebatarinja

Julie Rrap

Bonita Ely

Kate Scardifield

Sally Garromara

Madonna Staunton

Reinhold Inkamala

Darren Sylvester

Raafat Ishak

Ken Thaiday Snr

Harley Ives

Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa

Nyurpaya Kaika

Jenny Watson

Kitty Kantilla

Kaylene Whiskey

Deborah Kelly

Roy Wiggan

The Kingpins

Kunmanara (Mumu Mike) Williams

Maria Kozic

Paul Yore

Dhuwarrwarr Marika

Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu

John Mawurndjul

20/20: shared visions

November 2020 – March 2021

Contents

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The Ministers ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 4 Hon Paul Fletcher MP ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5 Robert James Ellicott AC QC ......................................................................................................... 7 The Program ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10 Courtney Kidd ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 11 Zoë Rodriguez ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 17 The Curators ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 20 James Kenney �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 21 Dr Oliver Watts ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 23 The Exhibition ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 26 Imogen Dixon-Smith ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 27 The Artists ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 30 Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 31 Richard Bell ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 35 The Kingpins ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 39 Barbara Cleveland ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 42 Isabel Davies ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 45 Bonita Ely ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 47 John Mawurndjul �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 51 Jimmy Njiminjuma ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 51 The Pairs ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 54 The Works ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 121 The Contributors ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 128

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The Ministers Hon. Paul Fletcher MP Robert James Ellicot AC, QC

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Foreword

Artbank is an Australian Government program which gives everyone the opportunity to show a piece of contemporary art in their homes, offices and public buildings. With artworks hanging in Australian embassies across the world, Artbank also plays a key role in showcasing Australian contemporary art overseas. From its earliest days, Artbank has worked to build a collection of Australian art which reflects the diversity and excellence of our artistic practice – from cutting-edge video work to masterful bark paintings, explosively colourful central desert paintings to intricate, meticulous tapestries. There is something for everyone in this collection.

20/20: Shared Visions is an exhibition designed to mark Artbank’s 40 years of collecting and providing access to Australian art. Through the exhibition, we discover some of the many stories that make up the fabric of Australian contemporary art, from family connections to enduring artistic legacies, geographic centres of artistic innovation to shared cultures and commitments to keep them strong.

A highlight for me is the early years of John Mawurndjul’s career under the tutelage of his brother Jimmy Njiminjuma, and the experimentation with style currently occurring among female artists in Yirrkala with the pairing of Dhuwarrwarr Marika and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu’s work. The depth and breadth of these connections is testament to the cultural significance of this collection.

This exhibition offers a chance to reflect on the successes of this unique Australian Government program and to look towards the next 40 years of championing the creativity and skill of Australian contemporary artists. Since 1980, Artbank has supported over 4,000 Australian artists through the acquisition of their work and has built one of the most significant and accessible collections of contemporary Australian art. Representation of female artists in the collection has grown from 20 per cent in its first year of operations to 40 per cent in 2020, and works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists now represent a fifth of the collection.

Artbank has always been a keen supporter of new talent, often being the first public institution to take a risk on an emerging artist, many of which go on to enjoy significant careers.

I am delighted that the Hon. Robert James Ellicott AC, QC, former Minister for Home Affairs, has provided his reflections as the Minister responsible for launching Artbank on 8 August 1980. His was a bold and far sighted initiative.

It is a pleasure to celebrate with Artbank such a major milestone of supporting and promoting Australian contemporary artists for 40 years.

The Hon. Paul Fletcher, MP Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts

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Foreword

In 1980 I was Minister for Home Affairs, which included the visual arts. Around the end of 1978 I was asked by Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to look into the possibility of setting up an art bank in Australia that would encourage the visual arts by acquiring the works of contemporary artists so they could then be leased for display in governmental and other buildings frequented by the public.

During 1979 I visited Ottawa to inspect the Canadian Art Bank. I was shown into a very large storeroom where the works of their contemporary artists were housed.

I learned about how they ran their art bank. However, I came away with the distinct impression that many of the artworks were unlikely to have a commercial potential.

I resolved there and then that although an art bank was a great idea for Australia to pursue with our contemporary artists, we had to ensure the works we acquired had the necessary commercial potential for leasing in public places.

When I returned I recommended to the Prime Minister that we establish an art bank in Australia. He agreed and the necessary steps were undertaken to establish it.

Artbank was being set up for the express purpose of encouraging and nurturing our artists whose artistic creativity was being widely acclaimed. When Artbank burst upon the art scene it would demonstrate that their art could be projected directly to the Australian public. Not through a museum-like structure but by highly skilled administrators working through a small office and a relatively confined area for the storage of the artworks it was intending to acquire.

Big changes were occurring in the 1970s in the development of the arts, changes which encouraged creativity and the pursuit of excellence in artistic endeavour.

In setting up Artbank we were conscious of the fact that we were providing a new medium through which the Australian public could view the excellence of the works of our contemporary artists. This would require strong leadership.

Finding a chairman to lead the board did not prove difficult. His name was Richard Crebbin. From 1976 he had been the Chairman of the permanent council of the Australian National Gallery, the building of which I was responsible for at the time.

This council, on which I sometimes sat, had well-known Australian artist Fred Williams and the gallery director James Mollison on it. Dick Crebbin had a very valuable art collection of his own that included artists like Dobell, Nolan, Blackman and Drysdale. He clearly knew what creative visual arts was about.

He was the obvious choice to chair Artbank. Other members chosen were Carl Andrew, Kenneth Jack and Sue Walker (later chairperson). This formed a very formidable board. With Graeme Sturgeon as Executive Director and James Kenny as Curator, the board and executive staff were highly equipped to launch Artbank and, in turn, to enhance our national aspirations and the world’s acceptance of our excellence in artistic endeavour.

I had to face a number of other issues. I decided it was vital that Artbank be established within my Department, in other words it should be run by government and not by the private sector. If not the independence and impartiality of Artbank would be quickly under threat.

Another vital issue was of course funding. I believed that if Artbank was efficiently administered from within government it would be able, in a short time, to fund itself.

However, some initial funding was necessary. The Prime Minister was enthusiastic to have it and this meant funding would be provided. The Treasurer agreed on an initial allocation of $200,000. Time has shown that it was a worthy investment.

By 1996, Artbank had large assets and substantial income. It was worth millions.

Our contemporary artists showed great promise, and a strong support for their works was assured by those administering the Artbank collection. Highly competent people love pursuing excellence and Artbank staff have proven this to be so.

As of 2020 it has the fastest growing collection of digital and multimedia art in Australia. Artbank is art in motion. It is unstoppable!

Artbank credit: Ben Hoskings

Bob Ellicott AC, QC Minister for Home Affairs 1977-1981

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The Program Courtney Kidd ZoĂŤ Rodriguez

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Artbank 2000–2020

When Artbank launched on 8 August 1980 it was to an intimate gathering of 30 people who listened to a crackly recording of ‘God Save the Queen’ along with robust speeches from the Governor-General Sir Zelman Cowan and the Minister for Home Affairs the Hon. Bob Ellicott, QC. Who could have imagined then that it would survive the rigours of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and more recently the horrendous global impact of COVID-19?

Forty years on and Artbank has not only become a stellar self-funding art support program and dynamic contemporary rental collection but it has also evolved to be the largest purchaser of solely contemporary Australian art in the country – as such it is an important national asset. By actively supporting and promoting Australian art Artbank has shown ways of enriching many people’s lives, helping to build expressive, inclusive and creative communities. Support for the arts in its many forms is an investment in the future creativity of the nation, and in turn our economic prosperity.

With Artbank’s initial acquisition budget of $200,000, the first board meeting approved an impressive list of works. This included the first catalogued item, an exquisite drawing of a kangaroo by New South Wales artist Richard Crichton.

Artbank’s former Deputy Director and Curator, James (Jim) Kenney travelled to Central Australia and acquired a terrific selection of work including a painting by Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa. This work marked the beginning of the highly regarded Indigenous component of the collection, which today comprises 20 per cent of the overall Artbank holding of works. Back in 1980 Artbank was one of the first cultural bodies to actively acquire and promote Indigenous art and Kenney is an important figure in this history, working closely with the impressive inaugural Director Graeme Sturgeon. Together they set up many of our processes, which were to auger well for Artbank’s future and establish Artbank as a successful model for arts support here and overseas.

In 2001, under the leadership of Antonia Syme, Artbank achieved a record annual spend on new acquisitions of $600,000. Preparations began for a touring show of Tiwi works, Kiripuranji: Contemporary Art from the Tiwi Islands. It was a collaboration between Artbank and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Trade’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander program. Artbank has enjoyed many collaborations of this nature and one of the more far reaching is its relationship with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – over 70 Australian embassies and high commissions overseas lease works from Artbank for their premises.

For both Artbank and DFAT, contemporary art is a way of engaging with the world and providing a context in which diplomacy and dialogue can flourish. Artwork on display represents a mutual appreciation of art and culture, coupled with the prospect of establishing common ground between different nations and cultures.

By 2002 Artbank had increased the momentum to find greater numbers of clients in both the public and the private sector. Big commercial clients such as DaimlerChrysler came on board. The Melbourne based firm had their own portfolio of art but wanted to freshen it by delving into the Artbank collection, at that time made up of 8,500 works. Meanwhile in Sydney, Mills Nettheim Financial Services became clients in the old Tobacco Factory building in Paddington, which had previously housed key Sydney galleries such as Roslyn Oxley9 and Martin Browne Fine Art. The art world in Australia was growing and so too the number of artists, galleries and clients connecting with art. Work was being undertaken to establish a new Melbourne facility for Artbank and on 22 February 2005 the Artbank Melbourne showroom at 845 High Street, Armadale was opened by Senator the Hon. Rod Kemp, then Minister for the Arts and Sport. It was particularly welcomed by the Victorian arts community, aware that hiring rather than buying work would give visual arts consumers the freedom to push at their own aesthetic boundaries, all with the knowledge that they were supporting emerging artists.

Further south, Hydro Tasmania became a significant client leasing works for their corporate headquarters in Hobart including Spring Rain by artist Peter Walsh.

It evoked the colours and sensations of the season of renewal, an appropriate theme given the organisation’s success in capturing renewable resources.

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Artbank continues to enjoy servicing clients and working with galleries and artists from all regions across Australia, maintaining its mandate to be all inclusive and purchase artist’s work from all areas of our country.

The Global Financial Crash of 2008 was to affect Artbank in unique and challenging ways. Any downturn in business would impact on income to purchase works but Artbank, under the directorship of Geoffrey Cassidy, was in a strong position to weather this and clients responded by recognising the leasing service as a prudent choice, an economical way of living with art. During this year Artbank reached the milestone of raising $1 million to acquire artworks for the forthcoming year. The purchases not only offered financial support to artists but enabled them to gain a wider audience for their work. This is one of the first steps towards a successful career in the visual arts and particularly important for new and emerging artists who can find it difficult to fund exhibitions.

At this time a significant client to sign up was Sydney Water, furnishing its glamorous 16-floor purpose-built headquarters in Parramatta. The locale boasted cutting-edge technology and five-star rated sustainable design. Works chosen reflected water and environmental themes and included those by Nellie Gordon, Helicopter Tjungurrayi and Jemima Wyman.

Another very important client at this time was Optiver, a large derivatives trader, who housed artwork by 60 of Artbank’s artists across the five floors of their Art Deco building. Their locale was the original stock exchange building on Grosvenor Street, Sydney. Its director at that time, Rob Keldoulis selected a wild array of work including Christopher Langton’s Untitled, 2007; Samuel Tupou’s Anniversary Skulls, and Vernon Ah Kee’s See Me, 2006, which all looked sensational against the gravitas and splendour of the trading hub’s walls. Keldoulis, a keen Artbank supporter, moved on to set up the successful Vivienne Court Trading that now houses quirky dynamic works form Artbank’s collection. Optiver is today in a new location in Sydney’s CBD and continues to lease works to enliven its spaces.

Artbank’s success continued and in 2009 the Hon. Peter Garrett MP, then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts launched its inaugural collection of video works. While the medium of video art was not radically new Artbank was required to consider new conservation measures and new ways of generating audience appreciation of the time-based medium. One of Artbank’s great strengths is the way it works to engage viewer connection with novel art forms, enabling the democratisation of art, its ability to lessen the fear of the unknown and the contemporary, allowing people to take a risk with art.

Artbank Melbourne designed by Edition Office, photo Ben Hoskings

In 2011 Artbank invested $1 million in new acquisitions making it the biggest single purchaser of work by emerging Australian artists. Those purchases with their huge audience reach are on display in public spaces, offices and workplaces in Australia and overseas. Some of these works are at times on loan to other galleries or tour as part of exhibitions ensuring people who live in rural and regional Australia are able to share in the collection.

The same year, Message Stick: Indigenous Identity in Urban Australia began touring. It focused on the work of urban Indigenous artists and was launched in NAIDOC week by the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Kevin Rudd MP. Artbank works with DFAT’s Public Diplomacy Branch to curate international touring exhibitions of works in the Artbank collection. These exhibitions are a terrific way to highlight Australia’s artists internationally and to generate discussion and understanding of Australian culture.

In 2012 the Artbank collection was made available on the website. It was a mammoth task contacting 3,500 artists requesting permission to take their works live to viewers. The year also saw the implementation of the Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy, the Resale Royalty Scheme and the Indigenous Art Code, all implemented to empower artists and underpin community values of respect, inclusion and freedom of expression. The next challenge was to prepare to rehouse Artbank in Sydney.

In July of 2014, after thirty years of operating out of a ramshackle warehouse in Rosebery, Sydney, Artbank moved to a beautiful building with a state-of-the-art collection store, office space and public gallery, all accelerating Artbank’s next stage of growth.

The move, under the directorship of Tony Stephens, enabled Artbank to more effectively engage clients, artists and the broader public with its objective to support and promote contemporary art. The year also welcomed Artbank Social Club, an event that heralded an open day where the public could come on site and view the huge bank of racks displaying more than 2,500 artworks. It proved to be incredibly popular as too was the Artbank Roadshow launched two years later.

The roadshow provided unrepresented visual artists with an opportunity to have their work seen and possibly acquired by Artbank thus continuing to help build a significant public collection of art truly representative of Australian cultural practice.

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Tina Havelock Stevens performance Strike for Artbank Sydney exhibition With thunderstroke and rain for Art Month Sydney, photo Document Photography

Following the Sydney relocation of Artbank, the hard work and preparations then began for setting up a more fully equipped and accessible Melbourne space and on 23 March 2018 the new Melbourne showroom was opened by Senator the Hon. Mitch Fifield, then Minister for Communications and the Arts. The relocation from Armadale to a converted warehouse in Collingwood reflected the organisation’s increasing relevance and audience reach. The inner-city facility included a larger racking system and a cultural event space for exhibitions, community events and public programs enabling greater capacity to service clients and support more artists.

The next couple of years became a period of consolidation where the organisation could more fully engage the part of its charter dedicated to educating the wider public and the industry about the benefits of living with contemporary art.

2020 ushered in the 40th year of Artbank’s existence under the welcome and steady leadership of Zoë Rodriguez. It was a heady start to the year with bushfires affecting many parts of Australia, an impact more deeply compounded with the shocking arrival of COVID-19. Nonetheless Artbank, having consolidated its position in the cultural landscape, was determined that these tumultuous events would not dampen its commitment to support and grow an extraordinary collection of Australian art. Artbank carried on its operations, adopting strict COVID-safe procedures. Purchases of artworks still occurred, exhibitions continued and client needs were met wherever possible.

Two projects Artbank has undertaken during lockdown to sustain its business are that of writing artwork narratives to assist in providing knowledge of the artworks and artists, and that of the key-wording of the collection. Both are huge ventures that utilise the specialist training, skills and experience of our Artbank staff. The key-wording project will be particularly exciting for clients. It ensures each artwork has relevant keywords attached to its record in our Collection Management System thus enhancing the discoverability of the collection when searching for works online.

One of the highlights of this year has been the 20/20: Shared Visions exhibition hosted at Artbank Sydney. It focuses on the community that has built around Artbank since its inception and features 40 works from the collection made up of 20 pairs that illuminate relationships, whether they be familial, intergenerational, shared experiences or of evolving practices.

20/20 celebrates the great vision and foresight revealed in establishing a sustainable art support program, one which has culminated in the development of a significant collection that tells the story of Australians and their art from 1980 to 2020.

Artbank looks forward to providing support to the arts community in the next 40 years and beyond, and to continue to provide access to the best and largest rental collection in Australia. All this is possible with the help of our valued artists and clients – thank you for backing this extraordinary and unique organisation, and for helping make Artbank the success it is today.

Courtney Kidd Artbank Consultant

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Looking Forward

20/20 signals clear vision, but the reality of this year is a level of uncertainty as our lives bend to the curve of the Coronavirus. It has dictated so much of our day-today: that we are effectively grounded; that we must wash our hands assiduously and keep a 1.5 metre distance from our fellow humans; increasingly that we must be masked.

This time of being grounded has provided ample time for Artbank to reflect on our first 40 years, during which we have grown from an idea loosely borrowed from our counterpart in Canada, to a largely self-sustaining and essential part of the contemporary Australian art scene, putting money in the pockets of our growing number of artists in the collection, and sharing their works in places public and private in Australia and across the world. Our quasi commercial model of using rental income to support our program, including acquisitions, is unusual for a government enterprise – it imposes a virtuous cycle on our work: buy works from artists to rent to clients; rent works to clients to buy works from artists.

Many Australian artists have come into our collection (a cultural rite of passage).

We’ve worked with gallerists, dealers and other art market professionals in finding these works, and we’ve worked with clients to supply these works to create accessibility beyond the walls of traditional cultural institutions. And of course we have benefited from excellent and dedicated staff from inaugural Director Graeme Sturgeon who cast a towering influence for good over Artbank from the start, in partnership with our founding Curator James (Jim) Kenney. We’ve all been building on the extraordinary legacy of their foresight, experience and care. I feel, and I know many on the current staff feel, it is an immense privilege to be carrying the baton for Artbank.

Through the works in this exhibition we are telling the story of Artbank and by extension the story of Australia over the last four decades. In our works notions of an Australian identity are explored, through depictions of Australia’s unique landscape, fauna and flora, and through works that grapple with our relationship with this country – flood, fire, environment, the migrant experience, the growing recognition of the significance of Australia’s First Nations people and the culture they share with fellow Australians and foreigners through art.

As we look forward to the next 40 years, we know that we will continue to support Australia’s visual artists through acquisition of their works, and that we will continue to find them temporary homes in corporate, government and residential settings in Australia and overseas through our rental scheme. In these ways we will continue to deliver on our enduring policy objectives. What might evolve is the diversity of media: surely digital will continue to develop. This 40th anniversary exhibition marks our move into the world of augmented reality. Thom Roberts’ new commission engages with our program through visual and word play and takes us on a joyful ride with his incredible imagination, making use of the virtual world to augment the real, to break down physical barriers. Through his work Artbank’s collection travels through the ether to anywhere – mimicking the physical movement of our works across the world. A perfect response to these times and a fitting way to guide us into the future.

Zoë Rodriguez Artbank Director

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Bather’s Pavilion, Mosman Luchetti Krelle Interior Design Left: Peter Quinn Atomic, 2006 Right: Sarah Robson Alpha & Beta, 1998 Photo Michael Wee

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The Curators James Kenney Dr Oliver Watts

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Breathing Life Into An Idea

As I write, it is 40 years to the day since Artbank was launched by GovernorGeneral Sir Zelman Cowan speaking to a small gathering of invited guests in Sydney.

Artbank’s purpose was to ‘grow the market’ for the visual arts and crafts in Australia, achieving this through a dual program of art purchases and rentals.

It was set up by the Commonwealth Government with generous funding for art acquisitions across Australia. With this nurturing funding and a relatively open charter, inaugural Director Graeme Sturgeon and a staff of four, including myself, set about breathing life into the idea of Artbank.

Since the acquisition program would provide stock for the rental scheme it would be fair to say that it was the primus inter pares of Artbank’s dual functions. It was also the program that would bestow the most immediate and measurable benefit to artists and crafts people as it was rolled out across Australia. Furthermore, a purchase by Artbank conferred the intangible benefits of recognition and encouragement while its rental scheme ensured opportunities for their work to be seen in workplaces across the country and in Australian posts overseas. Young up-and-comers in particular appreciated this fillip to their careers, acknowledged by many in later years. With its generous acquisition budget, especially in early years, Artbank was free to buy widely, building up a large and diverse bank of visual arts and crafts to satisfy the equally varied needs of the rental scheme.

Reaching out to the widely dispersed artistic community in pre-internet days was challenging. Graeme and I had a well-worn path to all capital cities and major regional centres visiting commercial galleries and studios. Initially these visits were geared towards ‘spreading the word’ and it was soon evident that artists across the country were warming to the idea as the number of submissions and invitations posted to Artbank rose.

Occasionally it was possible to step off the ‘beaten path’ and visit artists living remotely. For me, one of the most memorable of these opportunities was in 1982 when I was invited by the art adviser at Papunya to accompany him on a visit to the community in the Central Desert out of Alice Springs. After a dusty, bumpy trip I met and served afternoon tea to community elders, all of whom were also eminent artists and pioneers of Papunya’s so-called ‘dot-painting’ movement, now acclaimed at home and worldwide.

During my 16-year tenure as Artbank‘s curator in the 1980s and 1990s there was a steady parade of technical developments that improved communications and efficiency. Starting with a card-based data system, a memory typewriter and Polaroid camera, we progressed to computerisation of the database within six years. This had enormous benefits to daily operations. The greatest of these developments, the internet, came after my tenure but, just as it has changed the world, it has had immeasurable benefits to Artbank in reaching out to artists and rental clients.

The arts and crafts in Australia have grown impressively in the last 40 years, with many, many new participants, most notably of women. I am confident Artbank has been a worthy contributor to this phenomenon and I am proud to have played a part.

James Kenney Artbank Curator, 1980-1996

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Foot Out The Door

As the curator at Artbank it is rare, but not uncommon, to escort guests through the open storage, or what we internally call The Racks. As you enter, the dark space flickers on as if by genie magic and all of a sudden you are surrounded by artworks 12 feet up, way above your head and right at your feet. Then there are drawers and shelves and crates. As the need for rental art waxes and wanes three to five thousand works hang in the building at any given time.

Unlike other collecting institutions, there is no overarching hanging system: not alphabetical, not stylistic, not subject matter or date. All the works are thrown in together. The works do not rest easily in their own space and seem to have one foot out the door; there are always a few that have escaped to the airlock dock. As a fluid leasing collection, to maximise storage and efficiency the art is stacked on the rack like, as our Senior Registrar Rod Palmer is want to say, ‘a giant game of Tetris’.

A system, however, could not be devised to better account for the general democratic character of the collection. The old and the new, the masterpiece and juvenilia, the oil on canvas and the ochre on bark, the photograph and the tapestry, historical genres and new conceptual forms, all hang equally on the wire mesh.

The actual cataloguing, of course done digitally, is the invisible hand of reason.

For a public institution the collection has the energy and eccentricity of a private collection. Some works give up their stories easily, some less so. Although as curators you have an obligation to study and ‘know’ your collection, that process is never complete. The excitement of discovery comes in many ways and not least through discussions with the artists themselves. Artbank has a particularly intimate and ongoing relationship with the art community.

On a recent visit Hilarie Mais updated our knowledge of her work in the collection.

We mentioned in passing that Rim (1985) was an interesting work in her oeuvre – a round portal where her work is usually centred on the grid. She remembered the work fondly as one that was in Australian Perspecta at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1985, one of her first major outings. So although a strange outlier in her practice it was personally significant. As we were talking Mais also spied a small twinned work, Simile (2005) that I had hardly noticed, a bit lost in the melee of the storage. When she spoke about them, the works looked more beautiful, not just for that instant but in a lasting way. The soft surface of the smoky blue topaz grids was made visible through Mais’s attention.

In transit from his residency at the Kluge-Ruhe Collection in Virginia, Gabriel Maralngurra from Injalak Arts in Gunbalanya (formerly Oenpelli) popped in for a visit. Artbank holds some very early Oenpelli works acquired from buying trips in the 1980s. In some instances information about the works has been lost or was never exchanged. Not only was Maralngurra an invaluable source of knowledge about these early Oenpelli works, but also an important ambassador and mediator of Kunwinjku culture. We felt we were encountering the works and their context in a totally different and singular way. While looking at a work by the master Djawida Nadjongorle, Maralngurra pointed at a particularly vibrant red ochre that created a strong rhythm in the painting; the ochre was a culturally significant colour from a specific site from Maralngurra’s own mother’s country.

The works in collection become nodes from which to travel laterally in many directions. They become physical artefacts that can stimulate many more encounters with our cultural heritage and national stories. Artbank has always acquired good and significant Australian contemporary work; as an artist support program our remit to support widely has always been there. Because we buy a little earlier, a little broader, and with a little more freedom, over time this has shaped a particular character in the collection. Contemporary art itself is not easily defined or hemmed in and as a collection that started in 1980, we have responded to the times in our own way but as directly as possible.

Dr Oliver Watts Artbank Senior Curator

Artbank Sydney, photo Tom Ferguson

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Sarah Smuts-Kennedy Ten Parts Whole, Three, 2014 Photo Tom Ferguson

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The Exhibition Imogen Dixon-Smith

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The Ties That Bind

The Australian art sector can feel like an extended family. Connections and relationships abound from shared projects, adjacent studios, mutual classes and common workplaces. Justin Trendall, when commissioned to create a work that would mark the occasion of Artbank’s move from its former offices in Roseberry to a custom, multi-purpose space in Waterloo in 2014, laid out the Artbank collection like a family tree, with each branch signifying some form of shared ancestry.

Trendall formed towers of names atop the strong spine of the first Papunya Tula masters, with thin spidery lines stretching upwards and outwards to a whole generation of Australian artists. A line has only one path, joining something at its beginning to something at its end. Trendall’s reliance on the line in One is Art nods at the traditional, linear understanding of the artistic canon. However, his incorporation of nodes – where multiple lines sprout and cross-pollinate – reveals the truer reality of coexisting movements, breakthroughs and progressions.

I am a singular curator in Artbank’s 40 years of operation and the connections I have drawn between works are just 20 among countless possibilities. Artworks come and go on a daily basis; neighbours on Artbank’s racks sometimes fleeting, sometimes long-term. Without taxonomy or classification dictating their position in the store, chance encounters can reveal both stylistic relationships as well as departures and diversions.

The daunting task of entering a new collection as a curator is the duty to memorise and familiarise, and quick. A well-known tactic of champion memorisers is to commit something to memory by transforming the sequence into a visual experience. This recognises our natural affinity for the visual, especially when compounded with associations of meaning and interpretation.

To memorise the order of a pack of cards, the best approach is to split them into groups of three. Assign the first card a person that triggers an association with the card, Tiger Woods for the King of Clubs for example. Assign the next card an action and the last an object. Then place these visual triads in a familiar space like your house. As you imagine yourself walking through the house, you remember each person you encounter, what they are doing and the corresponding object – you can recall those three cards and move on to the next.

Likewise, as I move through the Artbank collection, I recall through connections and associations. Robert Campbell Jnr’s cartoonish, yet confronting scenes of a segregated mid-century Australia take me across to Gordon Bennett’s biting critiques of the colonial legacy. The incredible holdings of early Papunya Tula artists like Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (who sit at the base of Trendall’s map) reminds me that the legacy of art creation and innovation continues on in Papunya today at the long-awaited Papunya Tjupi Arts centre. But Kaapa could just as easily be connected to the watercolours of Hermannsburg artist Walter Ebatarinja, or the more recent West ‘McDonald’s’ Ranges series or even a Hermannsburg pot. All these artists were touched by the legacy of the great Albert Namatjira, who lived out his last days in the Papunya community. Even Kaapa, one of the fathers of the Western Desert movement, experimented with watercolours in the early days of his career.

Likewise, the female subjects and text of Jenny Watson’s paintings connect just as easily with Kaylene Whiskey’s inspirational pop icons as they do with Ian Abdulla’s tender paintings and prose recounting his life and experiences, which is why Watson and Abdulla sit side by side on the racks of 20/20. David McDiarmid’s work also holds a particularly special place in the collection, not just for the generous gift of an intensely personal and culturally specific work to a public collection, but for the joy it brings to me as a queer curator to see the historic and continued influence of Artbank’s queer staff members reflected in the collection.

Next page: Justin Trendall One is Art, 2014 Unique state screenprint on cotton commissioned 2014

These pairings bring up stories from the collection that may surprise you, or be so obvious they greet you like an old friend. But I also encourage you to look across the room, and see the influences and inspirations that bounce from each artwork to the next, between what is only a small selection of exceptional Australian artists looking to express something about their past, their present and their hopes for the future.

Imogen Dixon-Smith Artbank Curator 27

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Justin Trendall One is Art, 2014 unique state screenprint on cotton, commissioned 2014

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The Artists Kunmanara (Mumu Mike) Williams Richard Bell

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Ngayuku mitaku Tjukurpa My Husband’s Story

Ngayulu Tuppy-nya munu ngayulu wangkanyi Kumanara-ku Tjukurpa-tjara, ngayuku miita, palumpa artwork, palumpa Tjukurpa. Paluru Tjukurpa pulka nganampa tjunu mantangka, ankunytja kuwaripangka ngura wiru-kutu.

I am Tuppy and I am telling you about my late husband’s, Kunmanara’s (Mumu Mike Williams) story, his artwork, his life. He left an incredible legacy behind for us on earth, before he went to a better place.

Palumpa canvas munu palumpa book ngura tjuta-kutu anu: Adelaide, Alice Springs, Darwin, Sydney and Melbourne – ngura winki-kutu, tjitji winki-kutu.

His artwork and his writing are now in many places: Adelaide, Alice Springs, Darwin, Sydney and Melbourne, and are seen by children in many places.

Ngayuku miitangku tjitji tjuta-ku pulka wanti-katingu mantangka, mukuringkula palyaningi. Tjitji tjutangku ritamilantjaku, English munu Pitjantjatjara, paluru tjana mantangka nyanga nyinara ritamilantjaku munu nintiringkunytjaku, Tjukurpa pulka.

My husband worked passionately to leave a wealth of knowledge on earth, for the next generation to read in both English and Pitjantjatjara languages. So that on this earth they could sit and read and learn from this important philosophy.

Iriti, yangupala nyinanyangka paluru nyangu tjilpi tjutangku kapamantanya nintiningi Ananguku manta munu Tjukurpa. Tjana kapmantanya nintiningi kaya kulinu, ‘Munta!

Ananguku ngura, Ananguku Tjukurpa. Nganampa walytja wiya.’

As a young man he saw the old men teach government about Anangu land and laws. The old men showed the government our traditional places. And the government understood, ‘Oh, this is Anangu land, Anangu Tjukurpa! This Land isn’t ours to take.’

Ngula, paluru walkatjunangi - piranpa tjuta kulintjaku paluru walkatjunangi.

Ananguku kaltja kunpu, Tjukurpa pulka ngarinyi. Tjana riitamilantjaku, kulintjaku, nintiringkunytjaku, munu tjana kulilku, ‘Munta! Alatji, alatji. Ananguku manta nyaruntjaku wiya.’

Later, he started making artwork so that non-Aboriginal people could learn and understand that our culture is strong and our law is of great importance. When people read, understand and learn they think, “Ah! It’s like this – the sacred sites and country belonging to Anangu is not to be destroyed!”

Paluru iriti-nguru Tjukurpa paintamilaningi, ka tjana ruuta palyara, paluru lita walkatjunangi. Palumpa wangka picturengka ngarala kutju kapamanta nintingku kulintja wiya, palu lita tjana kulini, uti. Uwangkarangku riitamilani, munu kulini, ‘Ai, paluru mulapa wangkanyi!’

He always painted our Tjukurpa, but when his birthplace Iyukuta was damaged when a road was built, he started writing texts. He understood that when law is expressed only in picture form, the government may not understand, but the written word is more explicit. This way everyone could read and think, ‘Ah, he is speaking the truth!’

Paluru Iyukuta-nya walkatjunangi. Paper kutjungka walkatjunu. Anthropology tjuta ngurpa, kulintja wiya, Pitjantjatjaraku ninti wiya, tjana wangkapai wiya, kulintja wiya – pina pati. Tjana ruuta kuranu, paluru tjana. Ka tjana tungunpungu munu tjana ruuta kuranu. Paluru walkatjunganyi lita tjuta, ka paluru walkatjunu munu mantangka wantikatingu. Wanti. Pampuntja wiya. Tjukurpa pulka.

He used to paint his birthplace, where the Iyukuta Tjukurpa is and wrote about it as part of one significant work. Anthropologists came to consult Anangu but would not listen to the full story, not understanding Pitjantjatjara, and being generally ignorant. In the end they didn’t listen and his birthplace was ruined when the road was built. He wrote multiple texts, explaining what happened and leaving a legacy on earth about it. ‘Leave it! Don’t interfere! That is a significant sacred site!’

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Paluru panya wangkangi, Tjukurpa pulka ngaranyi mantangka, Tjukurpa nganampa - manta nganampangka, kurantja wiya. Paluru wangkangi; ngura nganampa sellamilantja wiya, palya wiya. Malatja malatja tjutaku, tjiti tjutaku.

Alatji nganana kunpu kanyini.

He was talking about our traditional ways, our Tjukurpa and the way it governs the laws and life of our land. He was insisting that we cannot sell our land, it’s not right.

We have to keep it strong for the next generations, for all the children. We have always had ways of keeping our land safe.

Kulataku tjukurpa wangkangi, munu paintamilangi. Munu kulata nyangatja palumpa munu wati tjilpi tjutaku, kulata nyanga paluru kunpu mulapa munu wankaru. Tjukurpa nyangatja, iriti tjana kunpu kanyiningi, wati tjilpi tjutangku, minyma pampa tjutangku, kulata-tjara ankupai munuya kulata katantankupai, kukaku ankula, Tjukurpa nyanga palunya mantangka wantikatingu. Paluru nyanga paluru walkatjunu munu wangkangu, kulata nyangatja kunpu wati tjilpi tjutaku, kunpu munu nyuntu kulinma.

Wiru mulapa, nyanga paluru, paluru walkatjunangi munu paluru mantangka wantikatingu, Anangu tjutangku kulintjaku, kulata palyantjaku, witira kanyintjaku kunpu, palya.

He was talking about the spears too, using them in his artwork and talking about how they keep us strong. In the old days, when old people were young and healthy, the old men and the old women would go out to make spears, to go hunting. And so the spears still keep them strong. He wrote about them and said that the spears keep us safe, they are held on to tightly, protecting our country. It’s beautiful what he wrote, that he left this on earth for everyone to understand, to hold on to our Tjukurpa.

Piranpa tjuta ngurpa, panya Anangu tjutaku ara munu Tjukurpa. Ka Anangu maru tjuta ninti munu tjana book kulunypa tjuta palyaningi munu walkatjunangi, ka tjana nyangu, yaaltji-yaaltji nyara tjana ngurpa, yaaltji-yaaltji nyangatjana palyaningi, Pitjantjatjara munu English-tjara tjana mantu Anangu-ku kaltja.

Non-Indigenous people cannot understand the depth of our culture. However Anangu and First Nations Australians have significant knowledge, which we have written in multiple books to share. Some people don’t understand how deep our

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knowledge is because we speak different languages. This can make it hard to communicate the importance of our culture to you.

Nganana Tjukurpangka ngarala, nganampa kulintjaku. Tjitji malatja malatja nintiringkula kunpu kanyintjaku. Tjitji tjuta nintiringkula, Anangu way, English wiya, Pitjantjatjara. Nganampa wangka, nganampa manta.

When we stand at important Tjukurpa sites, there is much for us to consider.

Kunmanara wanted to write down these stories for the future generations so they could be secure and autonomous. He knew our children could only be strong if they learn in the way of our people. Not in English, but in Pitjantjatjara. In our language, on our country.

Paluru tjana ngurpa ka kaltja nyangatja, nganampa strong, wati tjilpi tjutaku, minyma tjutaku, tjitji uwankara tjutaku, wati yangupala tjutaku panya wati tjilpi tjutangku nintiningi alatji alatji palyala, nyanga alatji palyala, nintiringkula paluru, nyara paluru watiringkula paluru mala palyantjaku nintiringkula ka tjana ngapartji kungka tjuta alatji wangkanyi nyura paintamilila munu nintiringama, nyura titutjara strong alatjitu kanyila Ananguku kaltja.

Those people don’t understand, but our culture is strong. The men, women, children, young men are taught by the old men from a young age. They dance, they listen and learn from their grandfathers. The young ladies also listen and learn from their grandmothers, told through our art centres. The women tell the young ladies, ‘learn to paint and keep our culture alive and keep the culture strong’.

Ka nganana Tjukurpa nyanga paluru tjananya kanyira, nganana kunpu ngaranyi.

And so when we look after our own stories, after our own cultural obligations, we are strong.

Tjukurpa anu ngura tjutaku, Artbank ngura winkikutu anu, uwankara – paluru mukuringkula wantikatingu tjitji tjutaku. Palya.

The law he recorded has traveled to many locations, the artworks held by Artbank are traveling around, and all of this is what he wanted, to leave a legacy for the children. That’s all.

Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin

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Following page: Left: Kunmanara (Mumu Mike) Williams, Kulatangku and Iyakuta Tjukurpa 2016, ink and synthetic polymer paint on paper

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Right: Richard Bell Always Right 2003, synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Richard Bell

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The Artists The Kingpins Barbara Cleveland

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Spider Nanny

Since the spawn of Time.

Spider Nanny embodies the multi-limbed modus operandi of artists since time immemorial, collectivism. As an artist you use what you have, namely arms and legs. The Kingpins have no shortage of these, specifically eight of each. We cant’s help it, we were spawn this way.

Fascinated by the transformative possibilities of the body, costume and space, Spider Nanny presents a matriarchal monster splayed with deceiving passivity.

In what now feels like an opus compared to 2020’s TikTok-15-seconds-ofscreen-time fame, Spider Nanny is a one-shot performance to camera with a sculptural costume at its centre, acting as an agent for spectacle. Assertively answering the call to ‘Show us ya pink bits’ with a club-meets-opening-ceremony feminist fanfare, a motherload of technicolour expels into the viewers face, in true Bourgeoisian (aka Louise) arachnid awesomeness.

Twenty years on since The Kingpins inception, we are now an amorphous mass of can-do stretching over four cities. This ‘body’ now has no limits. No longer an interconnection of outreached limbs, and butting heads, dancing feet and busy (oh so busy) hands, now it’s our individual bodies that continue to swell and explode, implode, fail us, surprise us, create new bodies and further bodies of work.

Collective in consciousness like the spider’s fine gossamer that connects site with magic-like defiance, so too do the desire lines of collaborative practice and the collective movement, even whilst making with autonomy.

As the world swells and shifts, primary physical proximity dims and neon threads of contingent practice weave new ways of being. A motherboard of momentum spinning a safety net to save us all. That and a sharp pair of heels. Or fangs. Just try us. We dare you.

Emma Price

Following page: The Kingpins, Spider Nanny (still), 2013, digital video, 2:05mins.

Videographer: Josh Raymond

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Barbara Cleveland Bodies in Time (still), 2016, high definition digital video, 13:46 mins

MEET UP THIS WEEK OR NEXT WEEK? NEXT WEEK IS BETTER FOR ME, MAYBE WE CAN MEET BEFORE THE OPENING ON WEDNESDAY? YEP I CAN MEET BEFORE THE OPENING. I CAN DO THAT, BUT THAT WON’T REALLY GIVE US MUCH TIME TO TALK IF PEOPLE DON’T WRAP UP UNTIL 6PM? I CAN LEAVE WORK EARLY THAT DAY, SO COULD MEET AROUND 4.30PM? I HAVE TO SEE WHAT MY SCHEDULE IS, I WON’T KNOW UNTIL END OF THIS WEEK. 4.30PM WORKS FOR ME, THE OPENING WON’T START TILL 6.30PM SO THAT’S A GOOD TWO HOURS. I LIKED THE IDEA OF A RETURNING TO A REGULAR MEETING/DINNER TIME. IS EVERY TWO WEEKS OR EVERY MONTH DOABLE? PERHAPS WE CAN SET A REGULAR TIME AND WHOEVER MAKES IT IS FINE? I PREFER LATER IN THE WEEK SO I CAN HAVE A DRINK, EITHER THURSDAY OR FRIDAY. YEP I’D LOVE TO DO IT EVERY FORTNIGHT, I CAN USUALLY DO THURSDAY OR FRIDAY. I PROPOSE FRIDAY THE 13TH AS CHAT/DINNER DATE, AND WHOEVER CAN MAKE IT CAN MAKE IT? WOULD FORTNIGHTS ON A THURSDAY EVENING BE A BIT MORE ACHIEVABLE? OH SORRY, I THINK WE SENT OUR EMAILS AT THE SAME TIME. COULD WE DO THURSDAY? SHOULD WE TRY AND CATCH UP LATE NEXT WEEK TO DISCUSS? I CAN DO EITHER IN PERSON OR ON SKYPE. I’M FREE TO MEET MON/TUES NEXT WEEK? MOST MORNINGS NEXT WEEK ARE GOOD? CAN ANYONE MEET TOMORROW NIGHT IN PERSON OR ON SKYPE? I CAN DO TOMORROW NIGHT IN PERSON OR ON SKYPE. I AM FREE TOMORROW EVENING. COOL, SO AT LEAST 3 OF US CAN MEET. I FINISH AT 6PM, SO PERHAPS WE CAN MEET SOMEWHERE IN THE CITY? I CAN’T MAKE TONIGHT I’M SORRY I HAVE TO FINISH THIS GRANT. IN THAT CASE SHALL WE RESCHEDULE FOR TOMORROW OR THURSDAY? PLEASE MEET WITHOUT OUT ME AND FILL ME IN. OR I CAN DO TOMORROW OR THURSDAY NIGHT. I’M STILL IN THIS PLANNING MEETING, SO WOULD PREFER WEDS/THURS. I COULD DO TOMORROW FROM 6-7PM OR THURSDAY BETWEEN 6.30-8.30PM? TOMORROW IS GOOD!!! I CAN’T DO TOMORROW, BUT COULD DO THURSDAY EVENING? COOL, SO THURSDAY 6.30PM? WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE TO MEET SOMEWHERE NEAR CENTRAL? OK, SO THURSDAY 6.30-7.30PM? IF WE COULD DO 6.45PM-7.45PM THAT WOULD BE BETTER. HEY SURE I CAN MEET, BUT THAT IS A BIT LATE FOR ME I HAVE A 7AM FLIGHT THE NEXT DAY AND NEED TO PACK. MAYBE WE CAN MAKE IT 6.30PM AND I’LL DO MY BEST TO GET THERE BY THEN, BUT JUST KNOW I MIGHT BE A BIT LATE? CAN I JUST SKYPE IN WHEN YOU MEET? I MIGHT ALSO BE A LITTLE LATE, I HAVE A SKYPE AT 6PM, SHOULD GO FOR LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR THOUGH. PERHAPS WE CAN TALK OVER DINNER UNTIL 8PM AND THEN WE CAN GO TO THE OPENING TOGETHER? HOW ABOUT THOSE WHO CAN MAKE IT MEET AT 6.30-6.45? OK I’LL SKYPE IN AT 6.30PM. WHAT TIME SUITS? SAY 5PM OK? NEXT WEDNESDAY IS GOOD. YEP I CAN DO 5PM. SORRY I THOUGHT I WAS AVAILABLE NEXT WEDNESDAY, BUT I’VE JUST BEEN OFFERED A BIG GIG. WHAT IF WE DID 12.30PM ADELAIDE TIME/1PM SYDNEY TIME ON FRIDAY? YES, GOOD IDEA. I CAN DO THAT. HOW IS THE WEEK STARTING THE 14TH LOOKING FOR EVERYONE? I CAN DO WEDNESDAY OR THURSDAY? WHAT ABOUT WE MEET ON SATURDAY AT 1PM? I’M FREE THIS SATURDAY OR NEXT. SORRY! ACTUALLY, NEXT SATURDAY WORKS MUCH BETTER FOR ME AS I HAVE A DEADLINE ON WEDNESDAY. I CAN MEET NEXT SATURDAY. WHERE/WHEN ARE WE MEETING TODAY? WE’RE MEETING AT 6PM AT THE GATEWAY FOOD COURT. WOULD PEOPLE BE FREE EITHER TUESDAY OR WEDNESDAY FOR A SITE VISIT? GOOD IDEA I SHOULD BE AROUND. IN TERMS OF TIMING, I CAN DO EITHER AT THIS STAGE. SORRY, I CAN’T REALLY SAY AT THIS STAGE. PERHAPS IT’S EASIER FOR YOU TO WORK OUT WHEN YOU’RE AVAILABLE AND I’LL TRY TO FIT IN AROUND THAT. A2 BC Posters ART.indd 1

15/9/20 12:35 pm

The Artists Isabel Davies Bonita Ely

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It was an exciting occasion in 1975 when Lucy Lippard, American art historian and critic, was invited to lecture at the Ewing and George Paton Galleries (E&GPG), University of Melbourne. One hundred women artists, most of whom were unknown to each other, were invited to attend. Lippard showed slides of surprising and original contemporary artworks by American women artists. The resulting discussion about the NY Women’s Art Movement inspired the formation of the Women’s Art Forum. Bonita and I volunteered to coordinate the Forum and this was the beginning of our friendship. The Forum provided a stimulating and friendly environment for varied activities including visiting each other’s studios, lively discussion groups and later, the creation of the Women’s Art Forum Annual. It was great fun working together sorting the contributions and laying out the pages.

In addition to the success of the Forum, the insightful curation of themed exhibitions by E&GPG Director Kiffy Rubbo and Assistant Director Meredith Rogers created a great focal point for experimental artwork, which was unique in Melbourne at that time. Many significant shows, including The Money Show and The Map Show, gave women artists an opportunity to exhibit, generating a new energy and new approaches to their art practice.

After creating Perspex and aluminium relief constructions in the early 1970s, the scope of my work in the mid to late 1970s was influenced by feminist issues. Later I pursued a scientific, cultural and historic understanding of Australian landscapes and the influence of European occupation. From the mid-1970s, I used collage and assemblage, making the first of many box assemblages for The Money Show.

It was the beginning of a new era where women were more visible and confident.

In this environment, Bonita and I took part in many of the same exhibitions and art activities including the important work of the Women’s Art Register of which I am still an active Life Member. Having shared these exciting times, I was very sad when Bonita moved to Sydney.

Isabel Davies

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Cover of the inaugural Women’s Art Forum Annual, 1978.

Courtesy Isabel Davies

I met Isabel at the Ewing and George Paton Galleries (E&GPG), exhibiting together in themed exhibitions initiated by Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers: amongst others, The Grid Show; The Money Show, collaborating with Margaret Bell; and Women at Work: the Murray River Punch performance. E&GPG was Melbourne’s only public venue focusing on experimental art, notably including women artists.

Bruce Pollard’s private gallery, Pinacotheca, also showed experimental art. Male artists were his specialisation, funnily enough.

At Women’s Art Forums, we discussed ways to amplify women artists’ visibility, their history. Inspired by E&GPG’s Women’s Art Register, Anna Sande and I successfully applied for funding from the Schools Commission Innovations Program. Anna negotiated with Carringbush Library in Richmond to house the Women’s Art Register Extension Project, distributing it through inter-library lending.

Photographing women’s art in their studios, exhibitions, collections, processing donations, photocopying historic articles by and about women in Art & Australia magazines (Margaret Preston an active contributor), the duplicated resources were safely borrowed. We created the ‘Profile of Australian Women Sculptors, 1860–1960’, a slide show and catalogue for the 1978 Mildura Sculpture Triennial.

In 1975, after living abroad in polluted cities for five years, I was overwhelmed by Australia’s nature. The Mount Feathertop project evolved from bushwalking to its summit and documenting its magnificent panorama in all seasons.

Meanwhile I moved around the corner from Isabel’s home and studio so we met up often. My studio was in one large room, my partner John Loane (Viridian Press) installed his etching press in the other.

My friend Margaret Winford (nee Bell) was pregnant, so I began artworks addressing pregnancy, nurturing, mothering without necessarily being a Saintly Virgin, culminating in 1982 when I gave birth in Berlin, adding the Dogwoman cult to history’s fictions. I then moved to Sydney to join my daughter’s father.

Bonita Ely

Following page: Left: Bonita Ely Mount Feathertop (Spring), 1976 Pastel, mixed media Right: Isabel Davies Fibonacci Sequence 2, 1971 Perspex, chrome and steel

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The Artists John Mawurndjul Jimmy Njiminjuma

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Speakers John Mawurndjul and Seymour Wulida, September 2020 at the Maningrida Arts and Culture. Recording of Murray Garde.

John Mawurndjul Ngalyod, kamdokme Kurrurldul, dukkang wak. Kuronj karri, mankabo.

The rainbow serpent from Kurrurldul [Ngalyod, c. 1980], that one was painted first. It’s the serpent that has coiled itself around the crow, a crow djang is in the water of the creek at Kurrurldul.

Namekke karri Milmilngkan, benelarlmerrinj ngalkudji wam Kurrurldul ngalbuyika wam Milmilngkan.

This one [the other bark] is the serpent from Milmilngkan. The two of them decided to go their separate ways so one went off to Milmilngkan.

Kudjewk kadolhme, kadjenbebme, kamarduhmarduhke.

In the wet season, she rises to the surface and her tongue is flicking out back and forwards [depicted].

Balang bimbom kure Mumeka, minj iron kurrambalk diwirrinj, djal kunkod ngarrimarnbom ngarriyoy.

Balang [Njiminjuma] painted that at Mumeka when there were no houses made of iron, only the paperbark houses we used to live in.

Ngukyayawno dorrengh.

You can see the intestines of the serpent [in his painting].

Bokenh nganekurrmeng bim. Nganmarneyimeng bu ngayakmen wanjh ngudda yibimbun. Nganbukkang dolobbo.

We made these two paintings. He told me that if he should pass away, then I must keep painting. He taught me how to paint.

Seymour Wulida (son of Jimmy Njiminjuma) Ngalekke Kurrurldul beh, daberrk dorrengh, ngalbuyika kunj duninjh, kanemno kunj, Milmilngkan.

This one [Ngalyod, c. 1980] is from Kurrurldul and has a tassel on its head whilst the other one [Ngalyod (Rainbow Serpent), c. 1983] is a manifestation of a large male antilopine kangaroo, with ears like a kangaroo. That one is from Milmilngkan.

Following page: Left: Jimmy Njiminjuma Ngalyod c. 1980 Natural pigments on bark Right: John Mawurndjul Nygalyod (Rainbow Serpent) c. 1983 Natural pigments on bark

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Prose and Protest Linda Dement Nasim Nasr

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As a pair, Linda Dement’s Feminist Methodology Machine and Nasim Nasr’s Erasure complement and contrast. Both instruments of feminist prose and protest, the fast-paced punchy rhythm of Dement’s machine plays with obvious tactics of disturbance and disruption, while the poetic cadence of Nasr’s textual recitations and cyclical erasure speak to the same issue – silencing women’s voices. Nasr performs the problem, Dement invents ways to challenge it.

Nasr is an Iranian-born artist based in Sydney. Dressed in a chador, Nasr writes in chalk on a splayed version of the same garment. Clearly referencing the classroom chalkboard, Nasr writes from right to left in Farsi recollections of her memories growing up in Iran and from left to right in English, the translated words of feminist Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad. As she moves from side to side the text of both is erased. Dement, an instrumental figure of the Cyberfeminist art movement working at the forefront of electronic arts, performs feminist text and methodology through randomised, instructional slogans that offer practical advice for feminist living – suggesting what to destroy, reject, dismiss, protect and incite in order to practice feminism in the twenty-first century.

Following page: Linda Dement, Feminist Methodology Machine, 2016, three-channel video, no sound

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Nasim Nasr Erasure 2010, two-channel digital video

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Carrying Culture Kitty Kantilla Mary Pan and Nyurpaya Kaika

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At once examples of effective, functional and timeless design and objects of cutting-edge contemporary art, the connections between this pair of piti by Pitjantjatjara artists Mary Pan and Nyurpaya Kaika and this tunga by the late Tiwi artist Kitty Kantilla are multidimensional. Once considered and collected as ethnographic artefacts, the appreciation of the artistic and artisanal value of these art forms in Australia has taken time, but their place in the Artbank collection is unwavering.

In her discussion on Tiwi art, curator Margie West notes that the designs of Indigenous artists are often referential, ‘alluding to the activity with which they were originally associated’.1 The intentional curve of the wooden piti, made to fit snuggly in the cradle of its carrier’s arm, is beautiful in its simplicity and indicative of its function. Often adorned with figurative motifs that suggest what might be gathered and placed inside, Pan and Kaika take the referential to new heights.

By singeing Pitjantjatjara text on the external face of the piti, the artists literally spell out the object’s role and compare current methods of making to techniques used in the early days.

Kantilla is championed for her individual style of rhythmic, undulating fields of dot work that can be seen taking form on the outside of this bark basket. Kantilla’s designs reference the energy and movement of the Pukumani ceremony. This ceremony is held by Tiwi to farewell the deceased and the gathering of painted bodies singing and dancing is echoed in the melodic, imperfect geometry of Kantilla’s compositions. All deeply knowledgeable woman, Pan, Kaika and Kantilla use art to keep culture strong, finding innovative ways to reference ritual and ceremony, reiterating its contemporaneity.

Following page: Mary Pan and Nyurpaya Kaika Piti tjukurpa: piti nyangatja ara-irititjaku munu kuwaritjaku kulu (Piti story: early days’ piti, today’s piti) 2018, Mulga wood Kitty Kantilla, Tunga (bark basket), 1997, Natural earth pigments on bark, fibre string

1 Margie West, ‘Kuturwalumi (Kitty Kantilla)’, Contemporary Territory, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, 1994, p. 34.

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Sew Queer David McDiarmid Paul Yore

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These two works speak to each other across decades and geographies. Both queering the traditional, domestic associations of textile practice, McDiarmid’s Disco Kwilt comes to us from New York during a particularly heady moment in the history of gay culture, while Yore’s The Glorious Dawn stitched 30 years later reveals that even after three decades the need for questioning and agitating is still felt.

Generously donated to Artbank in 2013, McDiarmid’s work is part of a larger series made while living in New York City in the 1980s. These holographic works were gifted by the artist to friends, lovers and admirers, filling the houses of gay men in New York and Sydney. McDiarmid utilised new materials such as laser-etched mylar to mimic the trance-like spaces of the city’s dance clubs – spaces where McDiarmid felt most at home. The ‘baby block’ patterning is a reference to the popular historical quilting technique of American pioneer women. This motif, with its own sense of familial nostalgia, is reconfigured and recontextualised by the artist to create an aesthetic fitting for his own gay family. The celebratory nature of McDiarmid’s disco quilts captures an exceptional sentiment at the end point of gay liberation, before the eruption of the AIDS crisis.

Yore takes a more radical approach to subverting the domestic nature of the textile medium. Highly skilled in embroidery, weaving and appliqué, Yore breaks away from the peaceful motifs traditionally associated with these techniques, creating complex amalgamations of satire, iconography, pop culture and nationalism in a playful, yet sharp reflection on the heteronormative politics of the Australian vernacular.

Following page: Left: David McDiarmid Disco Kwilt, c. 1980 self-adhesive holographic film on composition board Right: Paul Yore The Glorious Dawn 2013, synthetic and metallic thread on wool and cotton

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Repainting Histories Gordon Bennett Robert Campbell Jnr

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When encountering the work of both Gordon Bennett and Robert Campbell Jnr we are confronted with a question and an offer. A postcolonial drive runs through each artist’s practice, inviting the viewer to engage with alternate perspectives that break down the Anglo-centric canon of Australian history. Central to Bennett and Campbell is the question of identity and the influence of society on its construction.

Each artist draws from their memories and experiences to produce art that not only inserts their own narrative into the canon, but forces us to question how our understanding of these stories can work to dismantle larger structural issues created from Australia’s colonial foundations.

Bennett and Campbell have a unique place in the Artbank collection. Both were collected extensively, leaving Artbank with a rich archive of each artist’s oeuvre and its progression over their careers. This pairing highlights the artists’ interrogation of colonial structures. Bennett’s work falls under his wider exploration of single point perspective as a European invention and the basis of a colonial mindset that is calculated, categorised and indicative of a single path and endpoint. Bennett borrows and repaints colonial depictions of Aboriginal people from source material such as textbooks. By overlaying these images with a perceptual grid, he calls attention to the single perspective of a centralised power that defined and controlled the fate of a whole continent’s numerous Indigenous nations.

Campbell engages with a more recent history, one he lived through. He paints a scene of the Kempsey picture theatres (now demolished) in the 1950s. Playing on screen is Jedda, the first feature-length film with central characters played

by Aboriginal actors. When this movie premiered in Darwin, it was broadcast to a segregated audience. Campbell localises the tragic irony of this occurrence and uses a bold, visual language to call attention to this divisive structure. His cartoonish style simplifies the figures into two distinct groups of people clearly differentiated by race. This simplified language, embellished with nods to traditional forms and symbolism, spells out stylistically the real experience of segregation that is depicted.

Following page: Left: Gordon Bennett, Psychotopographical Landscape (Impound), 1990, oil on canvas Right: Robert Campbell Jnr, Roped Off at the Pictures II, 1986, synthetic polymer paint on canvas

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The New Romantics Maria Kozic Kaylene Whiskey

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Culturally and geographically, Pitjantjatjara artist Kaylene Whiskey and Brooklynbased artist Maria Kozic make an unlikely pair. However, their adoption of pop cultural references, borrowed imagery and themes of female empowerment show the connections within the Artbank collection are both intersectional and almost infinite.

Kozic’s engagement with the Pop Art movement has characterised her practice since the 1970s. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Kozic brings a distinctly feminist spin to the interrogation of the divide between high and low art. Lips is an artwork twice-removed – an appropriation of Lichtenstein’s We Rose Up Slowly (1964), a work itself already appropriated from the Girls’ Romances comic books. Lichtenstein was famous for cropping found imagery and replacing original text to play with the dramatics of the genre. Kozic doesn’t shy away from doing the same, splitting Lichtenstein’s single image into three, each panel drawing us closer and closer to the woman’s lips until we are faced with its most base component – the Ben-Day dot, recognisable from its use as a cheap printing method for coloured comics. Our focus becomes the fulcrum of femininity and desire until it is abstracted into oblivion, a graphic reference to the cyclical bind of female existence.

A happy coincidence of this pairing is Whiskey’s use of the dot, here a reference to the traditional motifs of central and western desert artists. Whiskey has become known for her bold, comic book-style paintings that convey stories of her community and day-to-day life. She assumes the traditional role of artist as storyteller, but, like Kozic, borrows from pop culture, featuring idols such as Wonder Woman and Tina Turner as heroines in her action-packed stories. Here, Whiskey paints the story of Wonder Woman losing her crown to a cheeky mamu (ghost spirit) while out on country. Wonder Woman conjures up Tina Turner, ‘that Number One Anangu Kungka’, by listening to her music. She arrives in a red sports car, finds the crown and saves the day. Like all pop art, these works successfully hide the point where low art ends and high art begins, but unapologetically choose to focus their attention on the strength of women.

Following page: Left: Maria Kozic Lips, 1985, synthetic polymer paint on board Right: Kaylene Whiskey Rikina Kungka Kutju (One Really Cool Lady), 2015, synthetic polymer paint on canvas

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Cutting Wit Deborah Kelly Madonna Staunton

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The legacies of dada and surrealism are very strong in contemporary art. The methods and approaches of these movements found particularly fertile ground in the period of postmodernism, which looked for art that was more irrational and less utopian. A common misapprehension is that the movements were disconnected from real life. The work of Madonna Staunton and Deborah Kelly both work on a meeting of the abstract and the figurative, the real and the unreal.

On one hand Staunton’s work can be seen as studies in formal abstraction and composition, but the traces of the real newspapers, the advertising and other artefacts of life are still present. Kelly too creates fantastical portraits of women, her friends, perhaps pointing to the inner life of desire and dreams. But the images rely on the still recognisable parts: a slug body, a shark arm, a wormy head, a body full of heart.

Although seen as primarily European movements there have been some connections to Australia, such as Tristan Tzara performing Song of the Cockatoo (lifted directly from Carl Strehlow’s book of Indigenous Australian songs) in 1917 and André Breton writing in Art and Australia in 1936. Dada and surrealism have always exerted a strong force here from Barry Humphries to Joy Hester. The works of Staunton and Kelly although based on historical precedent assert a strong sense of place. The text ‘Grand Prix for Snowmobiles’ and ‘Halvorsen Cellars’ seem to conjure something of the Australian culture of sport, beer and larrikinism; it is uncertain whether Staunton is celebrating or knocking this sense of society. Kelly’s diptych too, with its species of snakes and sharks, conjures a particular (castration?) anxiety of a Puberty Blues summer. Both artists have taken collage and used it for their own particular purpose and context.

Following page: Above: Deborah Kelly, Untitled (my friends and I) #2, #5, 2007, paper collage Below: Madonna Staunton, Untitled, 1978, paper collage, pencil

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Legacy of Hermannsburg Walter Ebatarinja Myra Ah Chee Reinhold Inkamala Lenie Namatjira Ivy Pareroultja

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Western Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira had a profound impact on Australian art, his watercolours instantly recognisable to people across the country. Namatjira’s figurative style of using bold, highly saturated juxtapositions of colour captured the essence of the desert in a way that could only be achieved by those most familiar with the landscape. Walter Ebatarinja was a student of Namatjira, learning to paint in 1945 and developing into one of the masters of the Hermannsburg School.

Namatjira established a style of painting that would be carried on by artists in his family and community for years to come.

Reinhold Inkamala, Lenie Namatjira, Myra Ah Chee and Ivy Pareroultja’s series West ‘McDonald’s’ Ranges is a humorous yet powerful statement of selfdetermination in the face of historic colonisation. The artists continue the legacy of Namatjira through the use of watercolour to depict their country, but take this practice to new conceptual heights by painting on fast food packaging. The artists use creative expression as a way of critiquing the negative impact Western culture has had on Australia’s First Nations people, with the introduction of countless unhealthy consumables that bring disease to their communities. Paired against an earlier work from the Hermannsburg School, these works also become a clear statement of ownership; reclaiming ownership over the western-named MacDonnell Ranges, ownership over Namatjira’s watercolour style (ignoring the previous urge of art historians to label his work ‘western’), as well as subtly asserting the right of an artist to the ownership of their copyright in light of the recent and triumphant restoration of copyright to the Namatjira Foundation.

Following page: Left: Myra Ah Chee, Reinhold Inkamala, Lenie Namatjira and Ivy Pareroultja West ‘McDonald’s’ Ranges, 2016 watercolour on card Right: Walter Ebatarinja Untitled, c. 1980s watercolour

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Papunya Pioneers Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa Maureen Poulson Napangardi

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This pairing honours the incredible impact of a singular place in remote Australia that gave rise to a booming artistic movement of contemporary art in Australia; the Western Desert movement. Papunya is a small community 260 km northwest of Alice Springs formed in the late 1960s through the relocation of Pintupi, Luritja, Warlpiri, Arrernte and Anmatyerr people from their homelands. While its reputation is so heavily tied to the mythologised story of local school teacher Geoffrey Bardon who is championed for inspiring the movement, it is the family ties and the exceptional artistic dynasty that has persisted in this community that this pairing celebrates.

Papunya has seen the establishment of two significant art centres, the world famous Papunya Tula Artists incorporated by the founding members of the movement in 1972 and later relocated to the Pintupi homelands of Kintore and Kiwirrkurra, and the more recently established Papunya Tjupi Arts, formed in 2007 after years of agitation to accommodate the artists who remained in community following Papunya Tula’s departure.

In 1971, Anmatyerr artist Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa became the first Indigenous person to win a contemporary art award in Australia, inspiring a frenzy of artistic creation in the community. Kaapa was a key founding figure in the movement, appointed principal artist on the Honey Ant Dreaming mural at Papunya School and the first chairperson of Papunya Tula Artists. It is fitting that the formative moments of the movement occurred at Papunya School. Transferring traditional ceremonial designs from ephemeral sand drawings and body painting onto more permanent and transportable grounds such as boards and canvases, the founding artists of the Western Desert movement sought to keep culture strong through teaching. Children observed their fathers painting, heralding an incredible proliferation of skill and knowledge that has persisted in Papunya to this day.

Maureen Poulson Napangardi inherited her uncle and brother’s Kalipinypa Tjukurrpa, depicted here. The dreaming tells the story of an important rain-making ceremony. This ceremony brings a powerful storm that sends its deluge to rejuvenate the earth, filling rock holes, clay pans and creeks to create new life and growth across the land. Using a simple palette, Napangardi charges her canvas with the energy of the storm through precise, yet varied spacing between individual dots, amassing into larger diamonds that rub and pulsate against each other. She demonstrates a deep connection to the foundation of painting in Papunya through the continuation of specific motifs, but renews this tradition with an individual flair.

Following page: Left: Maureen Poulson Napangardi Kapi Tjukurpa (Water Dreaming) 2013, synthetic polymer paint on canvas Right: Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa Untitled, 1981 synthetic polymer paint on canvas

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Dormant Dances Ken Thaiday Snr Roy Wiggan

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As a collection that focuses on objects and paintings, vessels and tapestries to rent, one important area of contemporary art that we do not often engage with is performance art. Although we have a good number of performance pieces documented as video art, we also have a handful of objects that are, as Yves Klein used to say of his paintings, ‘ashes of a performance’. Both the work of Ken Thaiday and Roy Wiggan ask the viewer to imagine; the works, although beautiful and sculptural in their own right, must be visualised as moving in a communityengaged dance and song. Thaiday’s headdress is worn and activated by small pulleys. The feathers flutter, representing the bait fish falling out of the shark’s mouth as it bites or the spray of water breaking the surface. Wiggan’s dance wand is held sometimes like a shield, sometimes over the head, the colours swirl with the dancer’s body as they perform ilma. Silent and static, now on the gallery floor, or sometimes even an apartment, the works call strongly to other places.

Both artists are from sea country. For Torres Strait Islander culture, the shark is a key totemic animal and as Thaiday explains, ‘You have to look out for sharks when you swim in the sea. He’s the king out there and that’s why people see my headdresses as a symbol of law and order.’ Bardi elder Wiggan often represents the sea, the wind and the currents through concentric circles of radiating force.

Here the dance wand references the power of the poisonous jellyfish. Made from contemporary materials (from plastic to store bought yarn), both elders make the traditional contemporary and assert the continuing vitality of culture.

Following page: Left: Ken Thaiday Snr, Hammerhead shark (beizam) headdress 2001, bamboo, plywood, feathers, wire, enamel paint, synthetic cord, plastic Right: Roy Wiggan Jelly Fish (Poisonous), 1999, wool and wool felt, synthetic polymer paint on wood

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Flagging Hope Khadim Ali Raafat Ishak

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This pairing of works by Khadim Ali and Raafat Ishak explore the fraught experience of seeking asylum. Ali and Ishak use distinct yet equally powerful visual languages to share with the viewer a glimpse of the personal and the bureaucratic struggles faced by displaced people across the world.

Ali is an Afghan Hazara who was born in Pakistan after his parents were forced to flee Taliban persecution. He studied mural painting and calligraphy in Tehran and miniature painting in Lahore and brings this highly skilled technical training steeped in centuries of tradition to his practice. Ali reflects on the dehumanisation of refugees by bureaucracies and the media through his representation of displaced people as mythical creatures with devil-like personas. He sees this dehumanisation as a vehicle for complacency and mistreatment and hopes that his work ‘gives vision to the hidden stories of these people…to pay tribute to their resilience and strength in the depth of tragedy and trauma’.

Ishak’s series of abstracted paintings continues this conversation. Part painting, part performance, he transcribes, in abbreviated Arabic, responses he received after sending a standardised immigration request to 194 countries. Ishak received 97 replies that ranged from warm and welcoming to suspicious, demanding details and further explanations. The ghostly renditions of each country’s flag reference the nation state’s ever-present involvement in issues of displacement, be it direct, indirect or even as a symbol of hope.

Following page: Left: Raafat Ishak Responses to an immigration request from one hundred and ninety-four governments (study: Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam), 2007, oil and gesso on board Right: Khadim Ali The Arrivals #7 2016, gouache and gold leaf on nylon flag

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Drawing in Space Bronwyn Oliver Nellie Nambayana and Sally Garromara

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Both of these works come out of a logic of the hand. Oliver, Garromara and Nambayana are all skilled in a process of making that in the end suggests certain forms. Oliver is skilled in wired welding, which she perfected through studying not only contemporary art precedents but also historical techniques such as Celtic wire work. Garromara and Nambayana’s practices of making follow traditional dyeing and knotting to create the pandanus fish trap. Having said that, these are contemporary artworks made to be appreciated as a form whether hanging or standing. Traditionally sunk in riverbeds these works have never touched water.

The conical shape also equivocates strongly between the old and new, the ancient horn of plenty, the drinking horn, the conical hut, the conical trap. On the other hand, the pure geometries of the cone and spiral speak equally to the modernist canon obsessed by mathematics, natural shapes and essential forms.

In the end both works represent complex drawings in space. Julie Ewington says of Oliver that much of her work was heavily influenced by a characteristic of the Chelsea school, ‘A lot of her work is a large, iconic, memorable single image but interpreted in very complex, delicate and time-consuming ways.’ This insightful close reading holds equally for Garromara and Nambayana. There is a bold unifying shape expressed in a way that highlights strongly the gesture of the artist and the expressive possibilities of forms of ‘weaving’ together.

Following page: Left: Sally Garromara, Fish Trap, 2005, pandanus Right: Nellie Nambayana, Fish Trap, 2005, pandanus On wall: Bronwyn Oliver, Hatchery, 1991, copper and lead

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Set Piece Julie Rrap Darren Sylvester

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A photograph is a complex object. Since its invention, artists have pushed against the constricting assumption that by capturing a scene with the push of a button, the resulting photograph is nothing more than a truthful record of a singular moment in time. Both Darren Sylvester and Julie Rrap challenge this assumption, but with vastly differing approaches, revealing the ingenuity of artists working in this medium. Sylvester’s seamless, polished, magazine-ready scenes use a heightened sense of reality to subtly call into question their candour, while Rrap’s attempts at capturing hurried movements remind us that there is always something that precedes and something that proceeds a photograph, thus opening up the temporal possibilities of an image.

On Holiday depicts a perfectly preened young man gazing out the window of a Concorde replica meticulously recreated by the artist. Purchasing airline tableware from eBay, Sylvester has constructed a set in his studio, allowing him to control and perfect the image to the flawless degree of an ad. The resulting image hints at the tragic reality that the more perfected and manipulated the image, the more believable it is. Rrap on the other hand throws abandon to the image. For Loaded: Green #1 Rrap cast a series of shoes in frozen coloured inks, which she wore in a performance over several weeks. Her shoes became paint brushes as they melted on to a large canvas, these performative actions disintegrating into visceral marks of temporality, frozen only instantaneously by the camera’s shutter.

Following page: Left: Julie Rrap, Loaded: Green #1 2012, digital print Right: Darren Sylvester On Holiday, 2010 Digital Type C photograph

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An Aid to Memory Ian W. Abdulla Jenny Watson

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What these two paintings share is an interiority that finds expression through the marriage of image and text; an interiority that works to establish the agency of each artist. Watson and Abdulla have vastly different influences, experiences and careers, yet their practices echo the simplification of language, both textual and visual, to recount memories and at the same time, comment on the impact society has had on their lives.

Leading Australian artist Jenny Watson has represented Australia in major international shows including the 45th Venice Biennale. Often a mix of autobiographical and fictional references, Watson’s work incorporates a pseudoconfessional mode, calling on alter egos and self-deprecating irony. Incorporating collaged elements and painting on reams of fabric, Watson transports this mode of deconstruction into the painting itself, most notable here being the scrambling of the artist’s name and the artwork’s title. Letters topple down the page in a stair-like formation, tripping up Watson’s school girl persona and throwing her headfirst into this floating scene. Through an overwhelming feeling of disorientation, Watson imbues the image with the push and pull of her suburban girlish persona.

Meanwhile, Abdulla, the son of a Ngarrindjeri woman and an Afghani man, painted his memories of life growing up on farms at the Gerard Mission, fruit picking or fishing along the Murray River. Combining nostalgia and history, his work replays these memories in scenes that, on first look, seem rather idyllic with vast skies and lush open land. Abdulla also incorporates a textual narrative that tends to complicate the picturesque scene. The real, lived impact of colonisation is felt through these recollections, providing a window to the rural life of an Aboriginal family in the 1940s and 1950s with all the complex tensions that entailed.

Following page: Left: Jenny Watson Alice and the Little Man Revisited 1988, oil, collage on linen Right: Ian W. Abdulla Mother with fish 1996, synthetic polymer paint on canvas

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Stitching it Together Harley Ives Kate Scardifield

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When Kate Scardifield works on her large-scale pieces (this one is 14 metres long) she sits in her warehouse studio at the sewing machine surrounded by an undulating sea of pink. Like a quilt writ large, Scardifield creates a thing of shreds and patches. Although the process seems far removed from Harley Ives’ video it is not so dissimilar. Ives sits at his computer, a list of samples running down the screen as he layers the video image carefully, using files like an artist uses colours on a palette. Only at the end will the video, put together in pieces of digital code, coalesce through an overnight rendering into a single file; the final result coauthored by computer language.

The pieces of cloth in Scardifield’s work express their own age, social history and life of use. Ives too works in scratches and glitches as he plays footage through old video recorders, the information breaking up with every play until the image becomes an impressionistic version of itself. It is what Ives calls an ‘aesthetic study of the conduct of analogue video material’. Both these works centre on expressing the stitching, deconstructing the image and material, in order to draw attention to the material properties of the work. Fraying at the edges of both works show that art is at its very core always contingent, always reliant on a viewer and a place in time.

Following page: Left: Kate Scardifield Canis Major (wind instrument 1), 2019/2020, rip-stop nylon, sailcloth, parachute silk, marine canvas, custom fittings Right: Harley Ives Lake Liddell 2014, digital video

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Coming Full Circle Richard Crichton Thom Roberts

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This is a pairing of firsts and lasts.

When the first group of artworks arrived at Artbank headquarters in Market Street, Sydney, then Curator James Kenney commenced the process of cataloguing a brand-new collection.

He recalls: ‘I remember a delivery man bringing in the first four and so I decided to put theory to practice and set about documentation…Three of the pictures in that first delivery were fairly unremarkable but the fourth was quite remarkable.

Richard Crichton’s Kangaroo Study 4 seemed heaven-sent for the occasion and I chose it for the first number which was 80.000.00 in the old numbering system and became 0001 in the new computer-based system. His image of a kangaroo was strong and seems to be permanently etched into my brain. I suspect if I had 100 works to choose from that day this would still have been the one I selected to launch the rental collection”.

To mark 40 years of continuous and cyclical support of Australian contemporary art and artists, Artbank has commissioned Thom Roberts to create an artwork that ushers the collection into a new era. Roberts has taken ‘The Bank’ as his point of departure, reimagining Australia’s largest art rental scheme as an ATM. Like Crichton, Roberts masters the all-important foundational practice of drawing.

His familiar, graphic reference provides a readable image that is transformed by augmented reality (via the mediation of the ubiquitous app) to dispense art from the collection across Australia – no matter where you are located.

Following page: Left: Richard Crichton Kangaroo Study 4, 1980 Pastel on paper Right: Thom Roberts Magic Robot Machine, 2020 Synthetic polymer paint on cardboard with AR animation

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New Alchemists Dhuwarrwarr Marika Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu

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Senior Yolŋu artists Dhuwarrwarr Marika and Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu are among a group of female artists leading an incredible movement of experimentation and innovation in the East Arnhem Land community of Yirrkala. Trained by their fathers, both artists take this skill and inflect their own distinct style and subjects proving there are no bounds to the creative expression of one’s reverence for culture.

Dhuwarrwarr is a member of the Rirratjingu clan and was the first Yolŋu woman to be granted permission to independently paint sacred designs. Here she paints the distinctive curved swords of the Makassan people that were traded with Yolŋu for the right to fish trepang (sea cucumber) in their waters. Her father Mawalan Marika was an artist, activist and ceremonial leader and taught Dhuwarrwarr to paint this story. She approaches this iconography with an uninhibited hand, loosening the geometry of her father’s designs and inverting motifs. Rarrk is used only in small, controlled areas to accentuate the sword handles, while the background is left monochrome and undecorated. The knives cross and overlap – unrestrained by any border or framing technique, this liberated composition mimicking the trade, exchange and functionality of the subject depicted.

Nyapanyapa displays a similarly arresting control of form, narrative and design.

She is a woman of the Gumatj clan and the Yirritja moiety. In her practice, she makes a conscious decision not to paint traditional clan stories and designs, instead inventing her own abstracted motifs such as these ethereal stars, each with its own individual shape and extrusions that represent the spirits of her seven sisters in the constellation Djulpan. Her deft application of thin, repetitive lines creates shimmering, expressive works that depart from the meticulous precision of traditional designs.

Following page: Left: Dhuwarrwarr Marika, Makassan Swords and Long Knives, 2019, earth pigments on stringy bark Right: Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu, Untitled, 2018, natural earth pigments on bark

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The Works

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Ian W. Abdulla Born 1947, Swan River, SA Died 2011, Berri, SA Ngarrindjeri Mother with fish 1996 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 124.5 x 94.0 cm

Khadim Ali Born 1978, Quetta, Pakistan Lives and works in Sydney The Arrivals #7 2016 Gouache and gold leaf on nylon flag 236.0 x 240.0 cm

Richard Bell Born 1953, Charleville, Queensland Lives and works in Brisbane Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang Always Right 2003 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 103.0 x 136.0 cm

Gordon Bennett Born 1955, Monto, Queensland Died 2014, Brisbane Psychotopographical Landscape (Impound) 1990 Oil on canvas 102.5 x 102.5 cm

Robert Campbell Jnr Born 1944, Kempsey, NSW Died 1993, Kempsey, NSW Ngaku, Dhungatti Roped Off at the Pictures II 1986 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 122.5 x 93.5 cm

Barbara Cleveland Frances Barrett, born 1983, Sydney Kate Blackmore, born 1982, Adelaide Kelly Doley, born 1984, Melbourne Diana Baker Smith, born 1981, Sydney Live and work in Sydney Bodies in Time 2016 High definition digital video 13:46 mins

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Richard Crichton Born 1935, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne Kangaroo Study 4 1980 Pastel on paper 74.5 x 92.0 cm

Isabel Davies Born 1929, Melbourne Lives and works in Melbourne Fibonacci Sequence 2 1971 Perspex, chrome and steel 61.0 x 61.0 x 11.0 cm

Linda Dement Born 1960, Brisbane Lives and works in Sydney Feminist methodology machine 2016 Three-channel video, no sound 4:00 mins

Walter Ebatarinja Born 1915 Died 1986, Hermannsburg, NT Western Arrernte Untitled c. 1984 Watercolour 74.0 x 59.0 cm

Bonita Ely Born 1946, Mildura, VIC Lives and works Sydney Mount Feathertop (Spring) 1976 Pastel, mixed media 142.0 x 107.0 cm

Raafat Ishak Born 1967, Cairo, Egypt Lives and works Melbourne Responses to an immigration request from one hundred and ninety-four governments (study: Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand & Vietnam) 2007 Oil and gesso on board 220.0 x 30.0 cm

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Harley Ives Born 1981, Penrith, Sydney Lives and works in Sydney Lake Liddell 2014 Digital video 3:06 mins

Kitty Kantilla Born 1928, Bathurst Island, Tiwi Islands Died 2003, Darwin Tiwi Tunga (bark basket) 1997 Natural earth pigments on bark, fibre string 39.0 x 72.5 cm

Deborah Kelly Born 1962, Melbourne Lives and works in Sydney Untitled (my friends and I) #5 2007 Paper collage 72.0 x 94.5 cm Untitled (my friends and I) #2 2007 Paper collage 72.0 x 94.5 cm

The Kingpins Formed in 2000 Angelica Mesiti, born 1976, Sydney TĂŠcha Noble, born 1977, Melbourne Emma Price, born 1975, Sydney Katie Price, born 1978, Sydney Spider Nanny 2013 Digital video 2:05 mins

Maria Kozic Born 1957, Melbourne Lives and works Melbourne Lips 1985 Synthetic polymer paint on board 124 x 93.5 cm

Dhuwarrwarr Marika Born 1945, Miwatj Region, NT Lives and works Yirrkala, NT Yolŋu, Rirratjingu clan Makassan Swords and Long Knives Earth pigments on stringy bark 202.0 x 81.0 cm

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John Mawurndjul Born 1952, Kubukkan near Marrkolidjban, NT Lives and works Maningrida and Milmilngkan, NT Kuninjku Nygalyod (Rainbow Serpent) c. 1983 Natural pigments on bark 75.5 x 99.0 cm

David McDiarmid Born 1952, Hobart Died 1995, Sydney Disco Kwilt c. 1980 Self-adhesive holographic film on composition board 196.0 x 143.0 cm Gift of Mr Bernard Fitzgerald 2013.

Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program.

Lenie Namatjira, Reinhold Inkamala Ivy Pareroultja and Myra Ah Chee Lenie Namatjira born 1951, Hermannsburg, NT, Western Arrernte Reinhold Inkamala born 1974, Hermannsburg, NT, Western Arrernte Ivy Pareroultja born 1952, Hermannsburg NT, Luritja and Western Arrernte Myra Ah Chee born 1931, Oodnadatta, SA, Southern Arrernte and Luritja West ‘McDonald’s’ Ranges series Watercolour on card 42.0 x 35.0 cm

Sally Garromara and Nellie Nambayana Sally Garromara, born 1967 Lives and works Maningrida, NT Burarra (Martay) Nellie Nambayana, born 1934 Lives and works Maningrida, NT Burarra (Martay) Fish Trap 2005 Pandanus 169.0 x 50.0 x 54.0 cm; 107.0 x 43.0 x 48.0 cm

Maureen Poulson Napangardi Born 1958, Haasts Bluff, NT Lives and works Papunya, NT Luritja Kapi Tjukurpa (Water Dreaming) 2013 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 93.0 x 155.5 cm

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Nasim Nasr Born 1984, Tehran, Iran Lives and works Sydney and Melbourne Erasure 2010 Two channel digital video 10:00 mins

Jimmy Njiminjuma Born 1947, Mumeka, NT Died 2004, Mumeka, NT Kuninjku Ngalyod c. 1980 Natural pigments on bark 62.0 x 79.0 cm

Bronwyn Oliver Born 1959, Gum Flat, NSW Died 2006, Sydney Hatchery 1991 Copper and lead 50.0 x 70.0 x 60.0 cm

Mary Pan and Nyurpaya Kaika Mary Pan born 1944, Rocket Bore, NT Lives and works Amata, SA Pitjantjatjara Nyurpaya Kaika born 1949, Mount Conner, NT Lives and works Amata, SA Pitjantjatjara Piti tjukurpa: piti nyangatja ara-irititjaku munu kuwaritjaku kulu (Piti story: early days’ piti, today’s piti) 2018 Mulga wood 64.0 x 32.0 x 21.0 cm; 51.0 x 35.0 x 20.0 cm

Thom Roberts Born 1976, Sydney Lives and works Sydney Magic Robot Machine 2020 Synthetic polymer paint on cardboard with AR animation 59.0 x 59.0 cm

Julie Rrap Born 1950, Lismore, NSW Lives and works Sydney Loaded: Green #1 2012 Digital print 130.0 x 130.0 cm

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Kate Scardifield Born 1985, Sydney Lives and works Sydney Canis Major (wind instrument 1) 2019/2020 Rip-stop nylon, sailcloth, parachute silk, marine canvas, custom fittings Dimensions variable

Madonna Staunton Born 1938, Murwillumbah, NSW Died 2019, Brisbane Untitled 1978 Paper collage, pencil 69.0 x 56.5 cm Untitled 1978 Paper collage, pencil 69.0 x 56.5 cm

Darren Sylvester Born 1974, Sydney Lives and works Melbourne On Holiday 2010 Digital Type C photograph 164.0 x 124.0 cm

Ken Thaiday Snr Born 1950, Erub, Torres Strait Lives and Works Erub, Torres Strait Meriam Mer Hammerhead shark (beizam) headdress 2001 Bamboo, plywood, feathers, wire, enamel paint, synthetic cord, plastic 120.0 x 70.0 cm

Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa Born c. 1920, Napperby Station, NT Died 1989 Anmatyerr Untitled 1981 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 201.0 x 171.0 cm

Jenny Watson Born 1951, Melbourne Lives and works Brisbane Alice and the Little Man Revisited 1988 Oil, collage on linen 124.5 x 114.5 cm

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Kaylene Whiskey Born 1976, Indulkana, APY Lands Lives and works Indulkana, APY Lands Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Rikina Kungka Kutju (One Really Cool Lady) 2015 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 93.5 x 123.5 cm

Roy Wiggan Born 1930, Sunday Island, WA Died 2015, Broome, WA Bardi Jelly Fish (Poisonous) 1999 Wool and wool felt, synthetic polymer paint on wood 62.0 x 90.0 cm

Kunmanara (Mumu Mike) Williams Born 1952, Inturtjanu, APY Lands Died 2019, Alice Springs Pitjantjatjara Kulatangku 2016 Iyakuta Tjukurpa 2016 Ink and synthetic polymer paint on paper 150.0 x 100.0 cm

Paul Yore Born 1987, Melbourne Lives and works in Gippsland, VIC The Glorious Dawn 2013 Synthetic and metallic thread on wool and cotton 147.0 x 107.5 cm

Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu Born 1945, Yirrkala, NT Lives and works Yirrkala, NT Yolŋu, Gumatj clan Untitled 2018 Natural earth pigments on bark 190.0 x 76.0 cm

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The Contributors

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Barbara Cleveland is an Australian artist collective directed by Diana Baker Smith, Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore and Kelly Doley.

Richard Bell is an Australian artist and political activist. He is a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Kima and Gurang Gurang communities and is one of the founders of proppaNOW, a Brisbane-based Aboriginal art collective.

Isabel Davies is a Melbourne-based artist, founding member of the Women’s Art Register and joint coordinator of the Women’s Art Forum 1978.

Imogen Dixon-Smith is current Curator, Artbank.

Bonita Ely is a Sydney-based artist and Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW. She was a joint coordinator of the Women’s Art Forum 1978.

Robert James Ellicott AC, QC is a retired Australian barrister, politician and judge. Ellicott was Minister for Home Affairs and responsible for the Arts portfolio when Artbank was established in 1980.

Hon. Paul Fletcher, MP is current Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts.

Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin is a senior Pitjantjatjara woman committed to fostering traditional law, dance and painting. She is the wife of late Pitjantjatjara artist and Kunmanara Mumu Mike Williams.

Courtney Kidd is a writer, arts critic and current Art Consultant for Artbank.

John Mawurndjul AM is a senior Kununjku artist based in Maningrida, Central Arnhem Land and Milmilngkan, Western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.

Emma Price is an artist, curator, mentor and founding member of the all-female artist collective The Kingpins.

Zoë Rodriguez is current Director, Artbank.

Dr Oliver Watts is current Senior Curator, Artbank.

Following page: Pipi, Bondi by Smart Design Studio Coen Young, study for a mirror #2, 2015 Photo: Prue Ruscoe

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First published 2020 – to mark the exhibition 20/20: Shared Visions in celebration of Artbank’s 40th anniversary Artbank November 2020 – March 2021 Artbank Director Zoë Rodriguez Exhibition Curator Imogen Dixon-Smith Exhibition Manager Rod Palmer Artbank Staff Paul Adair Carey Corbett Emma Crimmings Imogen Dixon-Smith Lara Dykun Amber Gane Benjamin Givney Jack Harman Matt James Courtney Kidd Camille Klose Sophie Moshakis Lauren Newton Natalie O’Connor Rod Palmer Sonya Smith Oliver Watts ISBN 978-0-646-82722-3

Published by Artbank 1/198-222 Young St. Waterloo NSW 2017 Australia PO Box 409 Surry Hills NSW 2010 artbank.gov.au © 2020 Artbank All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form without permission from the publisher. Copyright for the texts in this publication is held

by Artbank and the authors. Copyright for the images in this publication is held by the artists. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the respective authors and are not necessarily those of the publisher or the Australian Government.

Copy Editor Aleesha Paz Design Alexia Macias Exhibition Photography Silversalt Photography

Photography credits Christian Capurro Jenni Carter Jeremy Dillon Document Photography Tom Ferguson Robin Hearfield Ben Hoskings Stephen Oxenbury Silversalt Photography Prue Ruscoe Michael Wee Printing Peachy Print Translations Partimah Fielding Beth Sometimes Maningrida Arts & Culture Cultural Research Office Artbank is a Commonwealth Government program mandated with a support and promotion role for Australian contemporary visual art and artists.

Artbank is one of the largest institutional collectors of Australian contemporary art in the world – making its collection available to the broader public through a leasing program operating nationally.

A catalogue record work is available fro National Library of A

A catalogue record for this work is available from the National Library of Australia

Following page: Cover image: Kate Scardifield, Canis Major (wind instrument 1), 2019/2020. Photo Robin Hearfield

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