who just took out the $50,000 Len Fox Painting Award 2019, this country has a wealth of homegrown talent ripe for unearthing. Here are some of the significant galleries in Sydney who have invested heavily in Australian artists.
MAIN: ROSLYN OXLEY9. BOTTOM LEFT: COOEE ART. BOTTOM RIGHT: ARTSPACE.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART One of the major Sydney galleries, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in The Rocks has a habit of eschewing international blockbuster exhibitions in favour of supporting emerging Australian talent. More often than not, this risk-taking pays off, and the gallery has developed a reputation as a launching pad for exciting new work, as well as a magnifying glass for artforms and artists who may have been overlooked by other major galleries in the past. In addition to hosting groundbreaking contemporary exhibitions such as “The National 2019: New Australian Art”, MCA also has an impressive permanent collection with a focus on living Australian artists, with a strong commitment to work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. 140 George Street, The Rocks. mca.com.au
COOEE ART Australia’s oldest exhibiting Aboriginal art gallery, Cooee Art has staged more than 400 exhibitions of Indigenous art since it opened in 1981. The Cooee Art stockroom—which services two retail locations, the original Paddington shopfront and the second Bondi Beach gallery—contains more than 3,000 works of art from more than 150 individual artists, covering a wide range of regional styles. The gallery specialises in historically important bark paintings, 19th- and 20th-century artefacts and early desert boards as well as works of contemporary Indigenous art from renowned artists such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Tommy Yannima Watson and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. Regular exhibitions are held alongside a rotating collection of artworks for sale. 31 Lamrock Avenue, Bondi Beach. 326 Oxford Street, Paddington. cooeeart.com.au
