November/December 08
Aboriginal Dreaming
When I picked up the book Dollar Dreaming: Inside the Aboriginal Art World, written by the former chief art critic for The Australian, I rather relished an evening ahead of hard-hitting, excoriating opinion. Read More
Artbank: Celebrating 25 Years of Australian Art (SA) > SA
Artbank is the largest buyer of contemporary Australian art in the country. Read More
Borderlands: Phillip George (NSW) > NSW
Phillip George doesn’t pull his punches. He is an unapologetically political artist. Read More
Graduate Shows (VIC) > VIC
With the summer sun brooding on the horizon and the first few long balmy openings under the belt we are fast approaching that series of monster sun downers known on the official cultural calendars as the ‘grad shows’. Read More
Hans Heysen (SA) > SA
When I meet her for coffee the softly spoken Rebecca Andrews, Assistant Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, has just returned from a field trip to the Flinders Ranges with the South Australian Museum’s Waterhouse Club. Read More
Make it Good for the People: Darby Jampijinpa Ross (NT) > NT
Having spent much of his life creating highly detailed canvases, Indigenous Australian painter Darby Jampijinpa Ross was in his mid-nineties when, due to failing eyesight, he stopped painting for the first time in over 20 years. Read More
Point of View: Eugene Carchesio Explores the Collection (QLD) > QLD
With a career spanning more than 25 years, Brisbane artist Eugene Carchesio has established himself as one of Australia’s most fascinating and thought provoking contemporary artists. Read More
The Titled Stage: Mike Parr (TAS) > TAS
Detached, a new privately funded not-for-profit contemporary arts organisation, opens in Hobart this month and as its name suggests is an unknown quantity in the burgeoning Tasmanian contemporary art scene. Read More
Artbank: Celebrating 25 Years of Australian Art (SA)
By Stephanie Radok
Artbank is the largest buyer of contemporary Australian art in the country. It only collects work from living artists, buying it from exhibitions and dealers as well as from individual artists. It has over 9,500 contemporary artworks by about 3,500 artists for rental and fees start from $110 per artwork, with the minimum contract total of $550 per year. The revenue that Artbank raises from rentals is used to buy more art. The story told by this exhibition involves significant contemporary artworks acquired during each of the first 25 years of Artbank.
The idea for an art lending scheme in Australia was first mooted by Malcolm Fraser in 1977. Precedents around the world include the Canadian Artbank which began in 1972, the German Graphotek which began in the sixties and picture lending in Denver, Colorado which was initiated in the late 19th century by celebrated American librarian John Cotton Dana. In the seventies the socialist Netherlands government also purchased artworks to hang in public buildings.
The development of Artbank has coincided with great changes in art in Australia as new institutions like the National Gallery of Australia and the Museum of Contemporary Art, contemporary art spaces in every capital city, and university and corporate collections have all thrived. Artbank is part of a celebratory social movement that sees art as a valuable part of everyday life.
As Artbank began operations in 1980, it is now almost 30 years old rather than 25, but this exhibition has been on the road since 2006, taking in many regional galleries around the country. This is one of its significant goals: to allow the regions and the margins to be reminded of, and get a look at, what Artbank has in its collection. Because generally, it is the cities rather than the country that benefit from Artbank, as showrooms are located in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, though it is possible to organise rental of work via email or by post. Artbank lends to institutions and businesses, government departments, embassies, consulates and high
commissions, as well as to private homes.
Lionel Bawden, The Monsters (The Spirit of the Beehive), 2004, coloured Staedtler pencils, araldite and linseed oil, 42.5 x 80 x 46 cm. © Lionel Bawden.
Courtesy of Grantpirie Gallery, Sydney.
The good buys that Artbank has made are to be applauded. Important works range from Joel Elenberg’s 1979 Mask carved from black Belgian marble to Tracey Moffatt’s 1989 cibachrome photograph Something More, and from Ben Morieson’s 2004 Burnout performance stills to Philip Wolfhagen’s 1995 oil and wax paintings of crepuscular moments at dawn and dusk in Tasmania. The collection has not shied away from acquiring fragile works such as Louise Weaver’s 2000 Golden Oriole, heavy glass vases (1995-96) by Ben Edols and Kathy Elliott, Ken Thaiday’s 1996 Hammerhead Shark dance mask and Hossein Valamanesh’s 2002 shirt
carefully folded from a map.
Peter Timms, in his catalogue essay Rude Gestures in the Background, reminds us that art is often present in the media in the background of political speeches and interviews, and that notoriously, in 1993, the tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica at the United Nations was quickly covered up before Colin Powell argued his case for invading Iraq. In
Australia, it is Aboriginal art more often than not in the background of almost every interview with a politician (sorry or not) over the last ten years.
Timms also points out that “an important criterion governing purchases is that they should be attractive to potential borrowers.” Thus to some
degree the Artbank collection reflects the taste of its customers. Yet Dinah Dysart, in her essay Changing Perspectives, points out that many
borrowers want to be challenged by their rental art and expect contemporary art to provide them with intellectual stimulation and a way of starting significant conversations. The chance to live with art that Artbank provides introduces a richness into people’s lives that they may never again be able to do without.
John Brack, Confrontation, 1978, oil on canvas,
138 x 107 cm. © Estate of John Brack.
Artbank: Celebrating 25 years of Australian Art, Manning Regional
Art Gallery, Taree, NSW. 19 November - 11 January 2009
Stephanie Radok is an artist, writer, and editor based in Adelaide.
