Sydney Client Profile

As an art leasing collection Artbank is also adept at helping clients solve problems such as the most suitable placement of furnishings and objects in a working space alongside art works in that interior.

Symphony Australia, the service company for Australia’s six state symphony orchestras contacted Artbank to assist in this way.

They had just moved into an eighties style office block in Darlinghurst, Sydney. The brief from CEO Kate Lidbetter for “…affordable art with links to music…” resulted in a collection of photographs, prints and painting united by playful, lyrical surfaces that fill the office with an energy and dynamism. In the board room a suite of Ryzard Dabek’s photographs entitled Eurotrash play with ideas about fading memory.

Colour shifts and objects, such as the leaning tower of Pisa and the Colosseum, appear to distort and disintegrate in an atmospheric haze, not dissimilar to many a tourist snapshot. The light is European and takes viewers to the worlds of Verdi, Puccini and more.

Works by artists Elaine Campaner, Constantine Nicholas, and Walala Tjapaltjarri also feature in an installation that Lidbetter says “…our board, staff and visiting clients just love… we’re delighted at the way the art works have unified and lifted the whole tempo of the offices.”

Courtney Kidd

Art Consultant

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BALGO : Travelling Exhibition Report

Artbank’s latest travelling exhibition for the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT), Balgo: Contemporary Australian Art from the Balgo Hills has been touring the Pacific for some months now and positive feedback is starting to reach us! Balgo comprises a range of stunning works by the mainly Kukatja language speakers from the Warlayirti Artists art centre, located at Balgo Hills in remote Western Australia.

In Port Moresby, ‘Australia Week’ was held mid-March, and featured the Balgo exhibition as the flagship Australia Week activity. Displayed in the chancery’s main foyer, the show was promoted as a major international exhibition and received significant media attention. Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare was the guest of honour at the exhibition’s official opening reception on 9 March, heading an extensive and prominent guest list.

In Suva, the exhibition was launched at the Fiji Museum’s Art Gallery on 31 March by High Commissioner James Batley, who took the opportunity to reiterate the close people-to-people ties between Australia and Fiji. The museum received very enthusiastic audience responses, including appreciation expressed to the Australian Government for the opportunity to view such great works.

Balgo premiered in Jakarta on 23 January, coinciding with the Dreaming Stories: Australian Indigenous Cultural Festival. The Embassy arranged for the visit of two Balgo artists, the Warlayirti Art Centre Director, and Associate Professor Anita Lee Hong, Director of Curtin’s Aboriginal Studies Centre, to travel to Jakarta for the festival. Their program included a workshop with Jakarta College of the Arts students and a range of media appearances.

And finally, curator of the exhibition, Artbank’s Jackie Dunn, has returned this week from Noumea as the guest of the Consul-General of Australia, Ms Anita Butler and the Association of the Friends of the Museum of New Caledonia.

Working in partnership with the museum over four days, she presented an evening lecture to an enthusiastic audience; gave several floor talks, and worked with local artists in a relaxed one-day workshop, on the theme of identity.

Mandy O’Bryan

Collection Information Co-Ordinator