A FAIR TO REMEMBER
Ahead of Sydney Contemporary, three gallerists discuss the business of the art fair and the female artists they’ll be championing this year.
Ahead of Sydney Contemporary, gallerists share female artists they’ll be championing
Edwina Corlette Gallery
Now celebrating 10 years, Brisbane’s Edwina Corlette Gallery houses a stable of 28 contemporary artists from Australia and the Asia Pacific. Director Edwina Corlette has a keen intuition for painters on the cusp of notoriety — and for what design, fashion and art tastemakers want. Case in point are the industry favourites Corlette has represented since the gallery’s inception. Names like Julian Meagher, who went on to become a finalist in the Archibald, the Wynne Prize and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize; portraitist and multiple art prize winner Paul Ryan; in-demand painters Abbey McCulloch and Miranda Skoczek; and Vipoo Srivilasa and Mark Whalen, both of whom have an international following. Corlette insists her fair stand is only as strong as the art on show. This year’s highlights include work by rising stars Clara Adolphs, fresh from her Eva Breuer Travelling Art Scholarship residency, and Sally Anderson, winner of the 2017 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship. Corlette is most excited to exhibit work by the Yarrenyty Arltere Artists, a community of women from Larapinta Valley Town Camp in Alice Springs who were included in the 2018 NGV Triennial and the 21st Biennale of Sydney. “People are very interested in Indigenous work again, which is fabulous,” she says. “These artists are senior women in the community and in 2000, their situation was pretty grim, so they got together to make an arts centre in the town camp and it became a safe place for them. They make these wonderful, soft sculptures from found materials, woollen blankets and stitches — the work is so beautiful.” edwinacorlette.com ››