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Collectors' Space

Explore museum quality artworks never seen together in public before… or ever again.

The Collectors’ Space, an annual exhibition that celebrates private art collections, and in 2017, the Collector's Space exhibition will be curated by Max Germanos of 3:33 Art Projects. Max is both an avid collector and a curator.  As a passionate advocate of Australian contemporary art he has curated exhibitions for some of Australia's leading artists including Dale Frank, Ken Whisson, Noel McKenna, Euan MacLeod, Lucy Culliton, Joanna Braithwaite, Ben Quilty, and Neil Frazer.  As a collector, Max was featured in the Collector's Space exhibition in 2015 and has forged close friendships with many artists. He was also painted for the AGNSW's Archibald Prize in 2016 by artist David Griggs, "It's a G Thang".

Max's unique curatorial vision in 2017 brings together a selection of artists and a depiction of their own purchased art collections, it explores what they buy and why.  Most artists do no not make a lot of money (even the successful ones) so that often artists are restricted in what they can acquire to 'swapping', the long standing practice whereby an artist does not necessarily choose a work but rather swaps with another artist.  This can be something of a lottery and may not always align with the artist's taste.  A true purchase by a practising artist, and the commitment to invest in a particular work and support a particular artist, provides an interesting and insightful perspective on collecting art.
The exhibition space for the Collector's Space will be provided through a partnership with one of  Australia's best known galleries, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.  The exhibition will be in the downstairs gallery which represents a hidden environment where artists commercialise their practice and which perfectly encapsulates this year's Collector's Space theme of "Artists as Collectors: what do they buy".

Confirmed Artists for Collector's Space include: Archibald winning artists Del Kathryn Barton, Nicholas Harding, abstract artist Lara Merrett and Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran.


Del Kathryn Barton is one of Australia’s most prominent contemporary artists. She has been exhibiting since 1995 and her work is represented by numerous major institutions in Australia including the Art Gallery of NSW, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, and the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art. Uniquely, Del has been awarded the the Art Gallery of New South Wale's Archibald prize twice, in 2008 ad 2013.  In 2012, a solo exhibition of Barton’s work was presented at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. She has also been included in many notable groups exhibitions, such as Dark Heart, 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2014), and  Express Yourself, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. In 2015, Barton was awarded an AFTRS Creative Fellowship following on from her directorial debut with Brendan Fletcher for The Nightingale and the Rose (2015), for which she won an ADG award for Best Direction in an Animation. As an art Collector, Del considers art as her religion, "living with original works feeds every part of my being each day. I collect from the heart. If I had real money I would be out-of-control buying art from all over the world!”

Multi-award winning Nicholas Harding has been exhibiting for over thirty years.  He has been a finalist in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes many times and, in 2001, won the Archibald Prize with a portrait of John Bell as King Lear.  He also won the Dobell Drawing Prize in the same year.  In 2010, a major 25 year survey exhibition of his work was held at the SH Ervin Gallery in Sydney.  His work is represented in many major collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Portrait Gallery, and Art Gallery of New South Wales. Nicholas Harding is well known and highly regarded for his striking impasto lush colourful paintings.  Harding's practice explores the figure and the landscape including the beach.  Drawing is also at the core of Nicholas’ practice and, in 2013, he was invited to sketch the rehearsals of The Sydney Theatre Company’s production of ‘Waiting for Godot’. Interestingly, the works chosen from the Harding collection are black and white works that highlight his love of producing works on paper and the fascination with the human condition.

Lara Merrett currently lives and works in Sydney. In 1993, she studied painting abroad at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain, before completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales in 1996, and graduating with a Master of Arts (Painting) the following year. Lara has recently been commissioned for various projects at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop and is represented in numerous major collections including the collections of the University of New South Wales, Sydney; the Bundanon Estate; Artbank, Melbourne; RACV; Sofitel Hotel; Macquarie Bank and UBS, Australia. Lara Merrett’s colour-rich paintings have been compared to the romantic painters of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries: both ‘imagine geographies of space, atmosphere and physicality’. For Merrett, it’s the inquiry into the picture plane and surface, balance of ink and acrylic, of depth and opacity, chaos with order and the reference to otherness that inspire her works. Lara likes to collect works that are ambiguous and mysterious -  art works that keep her guessing and that draw her back to a work over time. Also small works are always attractive as it's something she struggles with in her own practice. 

Sri Lankan-born, Sydney-based artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran creates rough-edged, vibrant, new-age idols that are at once enticing and disquieting. He experiments with form and scale to explore the politics of sex, the monument, gender and organised religion. In 2014 he was awarded  the prestigious NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (emerging). In 2015, he won the 2015 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award, Australia’s richest and premier award for artists working in ceramics. He has exhibited broadly, presenting solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Australia, the Shepparton Art Museum and The Ian Potter Museum of Art. As a young artist and student, the support gained by Ramesh though purchases by peers and colleagues was pivotal in generating income to inject back into; what was at the time, a modest practice.  Such support inspired Ramesh to do a similar thing as I am now more established with a stable income stream. I prefer to support early career practitioners and students by purchasing their works. I believe It is important to find ways to nurture the younger generation. I am an enthusiastic observer of graduate exhibitions and often attend these to grasp zeitgeist and trends in art education and practice. I am also a keen consumer of contemporary design and hand made, contemporary table-ware. I have a collection of hand made ceramic vessels from Australia and Korea that give me pleasure to use and observe. Also, collecting prints and edition-based works is the next phase for me. This provides an accessible way to purchase the work of more established practitioners I have admired over time. 


The Collectors space is made possible through the generous support of:







Date: 1 March - 16 March
Time: Tuesday - Saturday 11-5pm
Cost: Free

Collectors' Space
8 Soudan Lane (Ground Floor), Paddington, NSW 2021

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