Sydney Contemporary has quickly found its niche in a city in which the most probing critical analysis of a work of art is usually: “How much did you pay for that?” Variations on a theme include: “Why would anybody pay that much?” and “They must’ve seen him coming.”
In Melbourne, art aficianados are more likely to keep such thoughts to themselves, making yummy noises in front of some noisome cultural artefact. This may be an argument for Melbourne’s sophistication as opposed to Sydney’s vulgarity, but when it comes to the cold, hard facts of the contemporary art market, vulgarity wins every time.
If Melbourne’s public art culture is well ahead of Sydney’s patchy efforts, it’s a different story with the commercial art market. As an art fair, Sydney Contemporary has always been more successful than its Melbourne counterparts, past and present. Maybe it’s to do with the climate, but Sydney people just love turning out for a big public hoopla and spending money. One suspects they’re also more enamoured with status symbols, and badges of upward social mobility.
Art is one of those badges, although it remains a neglected resource in Australia when one considers the sums spent on real estate, cars, travel, clothes and wine. At some stage our under-valued art market is going to take off. There’s just too much money around, and too much pressure being exerted by the globalisation of a contemporary art scene that finds American collectors queueing up to buy works of Aboriginal art.
That’s the theory anyhow. The reality is that many dealers have gone broke waiting for the Australian market to attain maturity. This year the fair arrives at a time when sales have been unusually flat, and dedicated collectors in short supply. The overwhelming hope, shared by all participants, who pay a small fortune to take a booth, is that Sydney Contemporary will supply a much-needed jump start to a sluggish market. We’ll know, by Sunday evening whether the longed-for defibrillation has taken place.
I had to view the fair during set-up, so I’m not able to report on sales, but the first signs were promising. Through some quirk of design, the layout seems more spacious this year, and galleries from around the country – with imports from New Zealand, Indonesia and Singapore – have made a big effort. As usual, at this early stage, the place was awash with optimism.
The first thing most visitors will see, unless they’re glued to their mobile phones, is an enormous inflatable gibbon perched on the roof of Carriageworks. Skywalker, is the work of Lisa Roet, who’s something of a specialist in primate art. It may be a poor imitation of King Kong astride the Empire State Building, but the work demonstrates how contemporary art can be frivolous, spectacular and committed all at the same time, as the big monkey is also intended to convey a conservation message.
Skywalker is the largest of twelve special installations, selected by Talia Linz of Artspace. The most eye-catching is Rebecca Baumann’s Refracted Field, presented by Moore Contemporary, which features four long rows of shiny, acrylic panels that capture and throw back light as the viewer strolls past. There’s also a wall of ceramic plates by the redoutable Stephen Bird, from Olsen Gallery, called Continent of Exiles. One of them immortalises the ultimate excuse of the underachiever: “If I wanted to, I could do a lot better”.
Upon entering Sydney Contemporary, Utopia Art stages the same ambush it has pulled off for the two previous fairs, with a stunning selection of large-scale paintings by leading Aboriginal artists, including one by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, which is almost certainly the most valuable item for sale in 2024. For good measure, there are also major pieces by John R. Walker and Kylie Stillman.
Directly opposite Utopia one finds New Zealand’s heavy-hitters, Gow Langsford. Next door is Neon Parc, from Melbourne, a gallery that has been steathily making its way from the margins to the mainstream. The highlight of their booth is a large abstract work by rising star, Teelah George, hung on an exterior wall.
Perhaps the biggest innovation ths year is an “expanded” Works on Paper section that has tempted mainstream galleries – Ames Yavuz, Nanda/Hobbs, N.Smith, Redbase Art and Utopia Art – to take a second booth. In the past, the Works on Paper has felt like a bazaar, in which visitors of modest means might buy a limited-edition print so as to not go home empty handed. Although prints and posters are excellent entry-level purchases, the new arrangements highlight more rare and valuable items. This year, alongside specialist print outlets such as the Australian Print Workshop, Cicada Press, and Whaling Road Studio, you’ll find a variety of other enterprises such as Mossenden Galleries, Vermilion Art and 16 Albermarle Project Space, each with their specific areas of interest.
There are more than 85 galleries represented this year, which is a modest tally alongside the big international fairs held by the Art Basel group in Basel, Miami, Hong Kong and Paris. It’s even small when compared to KIAF Seoul, also being held this week, but with 206 exhibitors. Frieze Seoul, in the same convention centre, is showing another 120.
Unless you’re like me, required to stop for a chat at every second booth, Sydney Contemporary is a far more manageable proposition than the mega-fairs. Visitors can take their time and discover where their personal preferences lie.
It’s interesting that top-of-the-line Sydney dealers such as Roslyn Oxley9, Sullivan + Strumpf, Martin Browne and Michael Reid, almost always opt to show a wide selection of work. Some of the artists they represent will even pop up elsewhere, as is the case with Imants Tillers, who has a piece with the Oxleys and another across the aisle with Arc One of Melbourne. Bill Henson may be purchased from Ros, or from her immediate neighbours, STARKWHITE of Auckland (and now Melbourne).
The fair allows the chance to see work from places such as New Zealand or Western Australia, that have very different art scenes to Sydney and Melbourne. But the most striking displays are probably to be found at the specialist Indigenous galleries, and those that have devoted their booths to solo exhibitions.
It’s certain there’ll be some impressive First Nations work at Alcaston Gallery and D’Lan Davidson, but that’s only the beginning. In a more contemporary vein, Emilia Galatis is showing only a handful of well-regarded artists, including Corban Clause Williams, Janangoo Butcher Cherel, and the one-and-only John Prince Siddon. Cassandra Bird has paintings and sculptural pieces by the rapidly emerging group, Tenant Creek Brio; while Ames Yavuz, has a room of new sculptural installations by Brook Andrew. One of the best Indigenous-themed booths is that of A Secondary Eye, which has a survey of work by Queenie McKenzie, the leading female painter of the Kimberley region.
On the other hand, I’m sorry to see the fair ushering the APY Artists Collective back into the fold this year, as there are many questions about the group’s operating practices that still need to be answered. Parts of the art world seem to have a remarkably short memory.
It may be a calculated risk to show only a single artist from one’s stable, but it allows for a quality and consistency of presentation that makes one forget, momentarily, that each booth is part of a vast, commercial apparatus, in which the aesthetics are subordinate to sales.
There’s a stand-out solos at Australian Galleries, which has a survey of Melbourne, figurative painter, Graeme Drendel; and another at Arthouse Gallery, which is showing Joshua Yeldham, a road-tested artfair favourite.
Drendel’s paintings, with their deadpan, dream-like scenarios are shown to great advantage as a group, with each image complementing the next. It allows the viewer to sample a sensibility rather than merely a picture or two.
With Yeldham, one is almost overwhemed by his obsessive, hyperactive approach. His paintings aspire to the condition of sculpture, and vice versa. Viewers will be seduced or flattened by this display of restless energy, but the artist’s commitment can’t be doubted.
Few booths are so intense, as the general idea is to appeal to an imaginary customer who may be drawn to some attractive item and stay to hear the sales pitch. The spiel won’t be anything to do with interior decoration – although that is always a secret subtext – but with the ideas behind the work, the way it relates to the dilemmas of contemporary life, or some extraordinary aspect of the artist’s biography – for a work of contemporary art may be a commodity, but it’s like no other commodity one might ever acquire. Buying art is like finding someone else’s dreams that miraculously echo your own. For the serious buyers there’s a psychological lure that supercedes prosaic considerations, such as “What’s it worth?”. Remember, the most valuable collections have been put together through passion, not avarice.
Sydney Contemporary 2024
Carriageworks, 5-8 September 2024
The Sydney Morning Herald people declined to publish this piece, for reasons known only to themselves