bolDambition

Creating a unique art collection.

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True COLOURS

now displayed in more than 25 cities around the globe and comprising works of many different styles across vastly different media, the Collection is a growing and enduring symbol of Macquarie’s Australian heritage; the strong spirit of possibility that’s been integral to its journey.

Built around the consistent theme of ‘the land and its psyche’, the Collection comprises visual works which in some way depict our Australian surroundings and convey a ‘spirit of place’.

This theme is also embodied and extended by the artists represented in the Collection. Most are emerging Australian talents who offer that same sense of potential and opportunity as the young Macquarie when the Collection was conceived.

These artworks are not locked away. Rather, they adorn the foyers, halls, meeting rooms and areas where Macquarie’s people, clients and guests congregate. The intent is that the Collection be shared and that, wherever in the world they hang, the works both unite and inspire their many disparate

viewers in dialogue, thought, fresh perspectives and ideas – and hopefully in appreciation.

Selecting the works, answering the ever-present question of what ‘the land and its psyche’ means and considering what an ‘emerging artist’ is – is undertaken by the Macquarie Group Collection Committee. This voluntary group of employees devotes time, energy and considerable expertise to sourcing new works and new artists that fit with the Collection’s evolving-yet-constant remit.

It is the work of the committee, along with an expert consultant, to make purchases, occasional commissions, and carry out the host of other activities that, during the years, has led to the Collection’s increasingly rich and layered identity.

emboldened with a vision for the future, the seed for a unique art collection was planted by Macquarie and former Chief executive officer, Tony Berg, almost three decades ago.

its aim was ambitious: the collection must feature emerging talent, and be nurtured to grow to mirror Macquarie’s own emerging identity.

an honourable ambition that, years on, has sprouted – bearing wonderful, multi-layered works known as the Macquarie group Collection.

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Meet our managerit’s immediately clear from the animation and depth of knowledge Helen demonstrates, that when she intones she has “the best job” in the world – she really means it!

As Helen explains, the Collection has been of interest to her since she began working for Macquarie back in 1993, as assistant to then CEO, Allan Moss. By that time, the Collection was being shaped by the committee and its chairman, Julian Beaumont.

When Collection director Liz Morell retired in 2008 to study Fine Arts, Helen was offered the position – and leapt at it.

It was in her first days in this role that Helen encountered one of her own, and the Collection’s, major influences and one of the art world’s most respected figures, curator nick Waterlow.

“It was an extraordinary privilege to work so closely with nick during those years in what was essentially one long art masterclass,” says Helen.

“For nick there was so much joy in it, so much fun in what we were doing. Whether it was exploring the galleries or doing a major rehanging which he had to get ‘just right’, and of course did. He was a genius, not just in selecting and understanding the art and where we wanted to go with it, but in his

observations of people and his real and genuine care and support for artists and the arts community, which is so very much what the Collection is all about.”

And what the Collection is about is very much what Helen, as its manager, is all about.

“While I don’t have a formal background in art, I have a keen interest and have learned an enormous amount over the years thanks to my natural interest, working with the committee and especially, of course, my time with nick,” she says.

“What I also know is what Macquarie is all about: what we stand for, where we have come from, how we are perceived at home and overseas and the role the Collection can and does play in that bigger picture. We are all serious about that role. I think one of my greatest pleasures is being able to look at all the works in the Collection and link them to the path that we have taken.”

The person in the enviable position of managing the Collection is Helen Burton.

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Pages 24-25: © Marion Borgelt, Lunar Arc: No 1 (detail), 2006, ply, MdF and polyurethane, 160cm x 330cm x 16cm (8 pieces), courtesy the artist and dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney.

01 © Marion Borgelt, Liquid Light: Butterfly No. 2, 2009, Belgian linen, acrylic, pins, MdF, 50cm diam x 3.5cm deep, courtesy the artist and dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney.

02 © Fiona Lowry, I act as the tongue of you, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 153cm x 220cm, courtesy the artist and Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney.

03 Helen Burton, Macquarie Group Collection.

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The evolution of workHelen goes on to point to the evolution and expansion of the works in the Collection, from the more conventional landscapes in oils and sculptural works, through to more abstract compositions, indigenous works, urban scenes and, more recently, digital works.

It’s a process that has been helped along, since the sad passing of nick Waterlow, by Felicity Fenner, who has now stepped into the role of consultant curator.

“As a great friend and colleague of nick’s, Felicity already had an intimate knowledge of what makes the Collection tick, thanks to their collaboration on art and artists and their like-minded pursuit of artworks that really transcend the ordinary and say something more,” says Helen.

Perhaps for Helen the ultimate expression of the dual evolution of both Macquarie Group and its Collection is encapsulated in the place in which a significant part of the Collection is now housed: the thoroughly modern, purpose-built, six Green Star-rated Macquarie headquarters at One Shelley Street, on Sydney’s darling Harbour

waterfront. Hundreds of metres of open plan walkways, thousands of square metres of wallspace in an airy open plan: is it a gallery or is it a workplace? For Helen, it is both.

“I think in the Collection and in our work as a corporation we are very much encouraged to seek new opportunities, but always within certain parameters. So the works we are choosing reflect the new, but still within the framework that defines the Collection: its focus on our land and its psyche, its support for emerging artists and its determination to keep the art accessible and open for all to enjoy.

“And here we are 25 years on in this extraordinary building with these extraordinary artworks, and knowing that all around the world others are enjoying them too”.

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04 © Simeon Walker, The Departed, 2009, oil on linen, 122cm x 122cm, courtesy the artist and Flinders Lane Gallery.

05 © Helen Pynor, Milk 3 (bird’s nest fern), 2009, C-type photograph face-mounted on glass, 160cm x 105cm, edition of 3 + 1AP, courtesy the artist and dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney.

06 © Marc de Jong, Outback, 2009, Oil on canvas, 116.5cm x 153cm, courtesy the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf Fine Art.

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Kate Shaw: Liquidity

Kate Shaw has spent years exploring, deepening and refining her artistic talent through study – initially in Fine Art at RMIT – followed by a series of positions both here and in the United States, including screenwriting, interactive TV and, more recently curating and working on major projects such as the Melbourne Biennale.

Her work, ‘Liquidity’ (pictured) uses one of her signature techniques, the ‘paint pour’. Her work is inspired by the physical environment – in particular evidence of its greater forces: glaciers, icebergs, volcanoes, avalanches and waves.

In her travels around Australia, Kate is ceaselessly drawn to record what she has seen.

In ‘Liquidity’ she has used her pouring technique to create what she calls a “reflection work” alluding not only to the reflection in a lake, but also the ideas behind it and the psychological relationship we have with the landscape – as revealed in the piece’s hint of Rorschach.

“I was doing this piece at the end of 2008, so it was also at the time of the GFC which was something I was thinking about and hearing about a lot as I was creating it. So the ‘Liquidity’ of its name also has that wider reference about everything being connected: the environment and the economy. It’s a work on many levels,” she says.

Since that time, Kate shows every sign of having ‘emerged’, with three solo exhibitions coming up for 2011 in Australia and overseas.

In those exhibitions her exploration of the power of the elements is continuing, with use of images that suggest landscape forms expanding to include imagery from the internet, in what she describes as “a commentary about our distancing and ambivalent relationship with nature”.

nici Cumpston: Attesting

One artist whose work has been recently purchased by the Collection is Nici Cumpston. Her piece, ‘Winter I, Nookamka Lake, 2010’ was selected from a broader body of work, ‘Attesting’, comprising two-metre-long, 75cm-high hand-coloured photographs on canvas.

‘Attesting’ tells the story of Lake Nookamka on the Murray Darling river system just before, during and after it was drained to supply water to agricultural land at the height of the drought. The receding waters revealed extraordinary evidence of the land’s inhabitants over thousands of years. Middens and ‘scar’ trees, whose bark was used to make tools and even canoes; and ‘ring’ trees whose branches were tied together as saplings so, as they grew, their unique shapes would send messages to other travellers and tribes as they made

their annual pilgrimages through the river country and beyond. As the drought broke, the waters once again rose to cover that evidence but, thanks to Nici’s vision, those images are now recorded, ‘attesting’ to what has gone before.

Nici explains: a sense of place, a wondering about “who has been here before”, has always been important to her, especially in recent years as she has been more intently exploring her Aboriginal heritage and what it means to her emerging career as an artist.

After initially qualifying as a nurse during the 1980s, Nici travelled for some years, not really sure what she wanted to do. It was her mother who suggested she attend art school, where Nici majored in photography – an interest inherited from her radiographer father – “there was always a darkroom at home so it was a medium I felt instantly drawn to”.

From there, Nici spent six years working as a lab photographer for the South Australian police department, while studying for her advanced diploma and working on her own creative projects at night. It was then that she discovered the Aboriginal Community College in Port Adelaide, where she began teaching and did so for 10 years before she was offered a position that involved writing a compulsory course in Aboriginal art, culture and design.

Now curating at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Nici is finding more time and more inspiration to focus on her own works, which continue to be inspired by the landscape and the shadowy suggestions of countless generations of previous inhabitants.

Her next project involves travelling to Broken Hill, home of her mother’s people, where she plans to explore the landscape and wait for its stories to emerge.

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07 © Kate Shaw, Liquidity, 2008, acrylic and resin on board, 2 panels each 90cm x 120cm, courtesy the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney.

08 © nici Cumpston, Winter I, Nookamka Lake, 2010, inkjet print on canvas, hand-coloured with pencil and watercolour, 77cm x 206cm, courtesy the artist and Gallerysmith, Melbourne.

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