Sydney Contemporary, our newest international art fair, is set to bring some seriously exciting visual arts romp when it descends upon Carriageworks this Thursday September 19. In an epic game of Tetris, 80 galleries will move into a patchwork of booths to represent the wealth of emerging, mid-career and established artists who personify the cultural gravitas of Australasia’s commercial circuit.
Christian Thompson, Howl Your Troubles, 2011.
The fair will join the 25-year-old strong Melbourne Art Fair on a biennial calendar to bring punters an all-under-one-roof extravaganza in alternate cities each year. Fair Director, Barry Keldoulis, explains the program, the space and how Sydney Contemporary will reposition Australia as a bridge between the art worlds of the Americas and Asia. “Sydney Contemporary is going to be different, because we wanted it to be,” says Keldoulis, whose ambitious aim is to showcase the Sydney art scene in its ‘fullness’. “I used to think that art fairs were not the best way to see art,” he says, “but the best way to see a hell of a lot of art all at once.” However, with the rendering of art fairs as the go-to platform for showing contemporary art, Keldoulis admits that the game has changed.
A flexible and approachable program will demonstrate a multitude of local and international art practices to not only reflect the ever-evolving creative landscape of Australia, but also echo the inventive precedence set by Carriageworks’ spectacularly overhauled interior. Sydney Contemporary creator Tim Etchells hired London architecture firm Stiff + Trevillion to bring the venue into a new league. “The space is fantastic, but a lot of people will have already been there,” says Keldoulis. “When people arrive, we want them to feel as though it’s a brand new experience. We’re working with the designers to make guests’ arrival and time there something altogether different.”
Exhibitors will fall into three categories: Current Contemporary, for established spaces; Future Contemporary, strictly for work produced in the last two years; and Project Contemporary, a series of ten spaces allocated to new galleries that have never before participated in an Australian art fair. And lest Sydney Contemporary’s inclusion of artist-run initiatives (ARIs) be forgotten. Griffin University is bringing down a slew of Brisbane-based ARIs as part of the fair’s Queensland Artist-run Initiatives Project. Sydney Council will also facilitate the attendance of Perth and Hobart ARIs that rally for all things emerging alongside Sydney ARI veteran FirstDraft and newcomer Alaska Projects.
Two curatorial partnerships, helmed by Aaron Seeto (4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art) and Mark Feary (Artspace), have been added to the mix. Seeto will explore large-scale practice in Installation Contemporary where a part of Carriageworks’ space will be devoted to major sculptural and wall-based creations. “I was just on site this morning with a number of young artists and some not so young artists who are part of Installation Contemporary, and we were looking at the rather grand spaces for them to do something with,” says Keldoulis. There was a level of anticipation and excitement in their encounter with the space we’ve got that certainly rubbed off on me.”
Feary on the other had has produced a sterling lineup for Video Contemporary to foreground analogue and digital work; pop-culture iconoclasts Soda_Jerk, Kate Mitchell (fresh from her appearance in this year’s Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Anne Landa Award) and Health Franco (also representing in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera 2013 exhibition) will all feature. Globally, Australia has one of the healthiest markets for video art; for Keldoulis, Video Contemporary is a particularly important part of the fair insofar as it speaks of the near-limitless potential of the medium.
Ash Keating, West Park Proposition, 2012
To further pique visitors’ interest, Sydney Contemporary will present a public program of talks and roundtable discussions to help contextualise the discussion of Australasia’s commercial art market in a contemporary setting. “We’ve developed the public programs to cover all bases,” says Keldoulis. “There are some elements of the program that’ll appeal to the cognoscenti and the art professional, and others that’ll have a much broader appeal for the general public.” Topics range from aesthetics in art and the ethics of buying locally to the nature of creativity and cross-industry collaboration.
Keldoulis’ pick from Sydney Contemporary’s public program? The keynote address from young Chilean curator Gonzalo Pedraza who spearheads a multidisciplinary space in Santiago, Matucana 100, that brings together art practices from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Slated for the afternoon of Friday September 20, Pedraza’s talk will lead to discussion about Australia and its place within the art community of the Pacific Rim. “We’re not at the end of the world, but at the centre of things if you look at it from a different perspective. In future iterations of the fair I’ll be looking to complete [representation from within] the Pacific Rim circle and build on that with Australia as a bridge, if you like, between the Americas and Asia,” says Keldoulis.
On the essence of Sydney Contemporary, says Keldoulis: “There’s something about the combination of cultural tourism and the excitement generated by a large aggregate event of quality. You can now see work from all over the world almost instantaneously on your computer, but a lot of good art really needs to be seen in the flesh. At an art fair such as Sydney [Contemporary], you can see works not only from around your neighbourhood, city and country, but from all over the world and be able to see them in a context where you can compare them all at the one time.”
BY ALEX SUTCLIFFE
Sydney Contemporary opens at Carriageworks this Thursday September 19 and runs until September 22.
