Sydney Contemporary 26

The broad sweeping claim by Sydney Contemporary Art Fair’s Director, Zoe Paulson that there are 100 galleries and 500 artists on display at this year’s 10th art fair didn’t quite match up with my impression that it was a smaller event than in previous years – and I’ve been going regularly since the 2013 debut. It only took me 2 hours to navigate, including many delightful conversations with eager gallery directors and the odd artist. It’s often taken 3 hours, such as last year when 116 galleries were on show.

I also noted that certain normally prominent galleries – Alcaston, Utopia and Roslyn Oxley spring to mind – had taken smaller and/or less-prominent positions this year. This may have been economy, or just possibly the consequence of the Fair’s owner, Tim Etchells’ keenness to place some of the few international galleries still attending – Gow Langsford and Fox Jensen – in prime positions as the punters come into Sydney’s Carriageworks.

Not that this ploy obscured the return of Annandale Galleries to the SCAF fold, hard to miss in the entry foyer with a showing of works by the great South African art-maker (and opera-maker) William Kentridge, one of the few really big names on display. Not outshone by him, though, was a suite of metallic works by the great innovator from Yirrkala, Guynbi Ganambarr. One huge panel coruscates with patterns and movement, and is matched by an etched circular satellite dish and a twisted mass of sculptural metal incised all over with clan miny’tji.

Out of the entrance-hall spotlight, D’Lan Contemporary offers less-dramatic Ganambarr barks, but was able to promote them in the special Fair issue of Art Collector magazine – which has a bit of a bias towards big name galleries. However, D’Lan’s main play is on a collection of works by the late Cliff Reid, an interesting choice for such a high-profile event. Reid was a really traditional man from Blackstone in the Western Desert who made few concessions to the market. The Fair is but a taste of a much larger online exhibition.

Two down, 12 to go – for that was the number of Fair booths I spotted specialising in the Indigenous. Oddly, several other booths seemed to have felt the need to include something First Nations to gild their lilies. A magnificent Selma Coulthard post-Hermannsberg canvas turns up, for instance in the Nanda/Hobbs stand. But, given that I was there before any buyers had actually been allowed through the doors, the absolute hit booth had to be Sabbia, the glass and ceramic specialists, who were reporting a sell-out already on the amazing pots of Alfred Lowe. The Aranda man who works out of the APYACC studio in Adelaide, has an infinite variety of fringed, brightly coloured shapes, his pots often taking a quasi-human form as a result of their wigs and grass-skirting.

Interestingly, the APYACC booth also had as many pots as canvases – which were virtually all by names I’ve not encountered before from the Lands.

And there were pots aplenty at the Rebecca Hossack booth; an entirely new collection from the prolific Naomi Hobson, the Kaantju and Umpila woman from Cape York. Based on local totem, the crocodile, they have a Bauhaus/Modernist feel in pristine white and black that suggests a broad art education by the artist. And so clean beside her wonderfully cluttered paintings. It was good to see Hossack back in the SCAF fold, for, last year, the selection committee rejected her application. It would seem that Tim Etchells came to realise as a result that a committee of commercial gallerists (as it was) might just have conflicted views about their rivals. This year’s selection committee involved only institutional experts, I’m told.

Has Wik sculpture featured in the Fair before? I suspect not – so thanks to A Secondary Eye for presenting a collection that included new work to me by Jack Bell. It seems I’ve been missing out, for Bell’s characteristically black-face works are in the NGA, AGSA and QAG collections. While his human couple have a quirky feel, his dog looked as though it would happily bite a chunk out my leg!

Art Leven’s full-length crocodile by the late Bob Burruwal was equally fearsome. Re-crafted in metal from Bob’s reedy weaving by the masters at UAP, it hangs threateningly between two bold Carol Puruntatameri barks and what may be the loveliest Emily Kngwarrey canvas in the Fair. Don’t expect aesthetic consistency in an event like this! I mean Sullivan & Strumpf are showing a moving Alex Seton sculpture in front of a wall of Tony Albert jokes.

And Everywhen Art from the Mornington Peninsular managed to fool me with the works of Melanie Koolmatrie, a young Ngarrindjeri artist from the Coorong who paints like an old Desert lady! And one of only three Torresian artists spotted, Brian Robinson, can be found at the One Space booth in the Works on Paper salle offering what looks like an astronomical saga spread across a whole wall.

Meanwhile, a feast of Desert artists people the Utopia Art booth, headed by a dark, dump-dump early Kngwarreye but backed by such names as Angelina Nungurrayi, Irene Nungurrayi, John West Tjupurrula, Mantua Nangala, Yukultji Napangati and George Tjungurrayi. Equally faithful to the hits that keep on giving, Michael Reid has repeated his eye-catching arch entry to his booth with a sugarbag etching on road signs by Gaypalani Wanambi that’s so much more interesting than the panels that kept winning her prizes that, at last, I might be tempted to buy!

Which, in the end, is what it’s all about at an art fair. How confident the folks at Cassandra Bird Gallery must be to aim for $35,000 for a 60 cms Wall Flower by Meriam Mer artist, fashion designer and curator, Dr Grace Lillian Lee? Inspired by the knotting and weaving of TSI old master, Ken Thaiday (and they’ve worked together on a major installation at the Fair), she’s made it to the Paris Haute Couture Week with her couture while still making complex art multiples for the gallery.

It’ll be interesting to see how the market responds to all of this. Were I a big money collector, I suspect I’d be heading for the N.Smith booth, were Natasha Walsh, an artist with a history of portraying her own fair face has turned her back on us in a work that required the full cooperation of her partner in life, who’s also done a marvellous job of housing the painting in a carved wooden boudoir!

As ever, there’s a mass of arty talks and entertainment on and off site at Carriageworks – Magic Card tricks by Damien Shen happening as I write this; an Art of Origin Quiz at lunchtime on Sunday, moderated by SCAF’s founding director Barry Keldoulis. And that’s about your lot for SCAF 2026, which winds up later that afternoon.

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