Cover Image: Install view of Electric Chairs by Andy Warhol, 1971, screenprint, printed in coloured inks, 96 x 128 cm. Artwork courtesy of National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS. Licensed by Copyright Agency 2024. Image credit: Marnie Bell

Over the last few years, artworks from the National Gallery of Australia have been on loan, on tour and out West. In addition to its touring exhibition program, the ‘Sharing the National Collection’ loan program, launched in July 2023, allows a selection of the National Gallery’s 155,000 artworks to be available for long term loans in regional galleries, including those in Western Australia.

Perth has a robust and distinctive creative community, but as the most remote capital city in the world, we also benefit from opportunities for cultural proximity. Art needs to be seen and interacted with to inspire, inform and engage new audiences. With each visit, art will resonate differently with every gallery and community it visits.

I recently caught up with some of the curators of our Perth galleries who are participating in the National Gallery’s lending and touring programs to get a gauge on what participating in one of these programs involves, and how they contribute to Western Australia’s cultural landscape.

Wanneroo Regional Gallery, under the City of Wanneroo, secured a long-term loan of over fifty Andy Warhol artworks through the ‘Sharing the National Collection’ program, which is being displayed on a three-month rotating basis over a two-year period.

The rotations have featured many of Warhol’s most memorable artworks including Elvis, the Campbells Soup suite, the complete Mick Jagger portrait series, his lesser-known Flowers portfolio, and his controversial Electric Chair series, which is currently on display.

Curator Leah Robbie has been running the program since August 2024 and says that having these Warhol pieces on loan and display has generated a great sense of pride and confidence in the Wanneroo community:

 “The Wanneroo community really enjoy these kinds of cultural connections, and their pride in having these artworks here is what really makes my heart sing. We have had a lot of residents bring their friends and family from overseas to see the works in the summer months, which was really lovely to see.”    

Robbie also states that these international exhibitions not only form a point of connection from Wanneroo to the world but also offer a unique source of inspiration and collaboration between local artists. In a future exhibition of pioneering botanical artist Mary Delany’s collages, which will be on digital loan from the British Museum, the City of Wanneroo will be contracting local artists to respond to Delany’s work:

“I will have people responding to her oeuvre; Samuel Beilby will be creating a soundscape to accompany the exhibition, Savannah Matthews will be creating a series of watercolours and textile works, and others from different disciplines will also contribute.”

 In terms of striking a balance between international, national, and local cultural interest, Robbie says it comes down to a combination of factors:

“It’s about what the general community wants to see, but also how I can blend as many facets of the art community, the general audience, and common interests into one kind of show.”

The second rotation of Andy Warhol’s Electric Chairs series will be on display at Wanneroo Regional Gallery until December, with the next round of artworks due to be installed in September 2025.

Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at the University of Western Australia is currently displaying two exhibitions in tandem; the National Collection touring exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists, and Lines in the Sand: Women from the West, which draws upon artworks from UWA’s own Cruther’s Collection of Women’s Art and Berndt Museum. Together, these exhibitions provide visitors with an opportunity to see some of the country’s most influential women artists alongside women artists from Western Australia who deserve recognition but are not yet household names.

Lawrence Wilson is the final stop for Know My Name and the only Western Australia venue on its two-year long national tour. This stop also constitutes a full circle moment for Lawrence Wilson as the gallery lent some pieces from their Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art to the original iteration of Know My Name in Canberra.

Curator at Lawrence Wilson Lee Kinsella says that the artworks from Know My Name are a natural fit with Lines in the Sand:

“While we have works by many of the artists in the Know My Name exhibition already in our collection, these are major works from the National Gallery’s collection. They are key moments that complement what we hold as well.”The central difference for this iteration of Know My Name, which features artists from the national canon such as Grace Cossington Smith, Emily Kam Kngwarray and Margaret Preston, is that these artworks are exhibited in context with Women from the West, which includes artists such as Elise Blumann, Olga Cironis, Julie Dowling and Pantjiti Mary McLean.

In exhibiting these shows in conversation with one another, Kinsella hopes they will be considered as part of one story:

“It’s about opening up for different voices, and for different experiences to be represented as part of the national dialogue. For me it’s about the dynamism of creative practice and the contribution of these practitioners. It’s not even about inserting the Western Australians into it, because they all operate within the same cultural landscape.”

Know My Name: Australian Women Artists and Lines in the Sand: Women from the West will be on display at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery until Saturday 30 August.

John Curtin Gallery is currently host to another touring exhibition courtesy of the National Collection and presented as part of the Bowness Family Foundation Touring Exhibition Series; Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Recently acquired by the National Gallery of Australia, this series of 126 colour photographs by Goldin of her chosen family, her ‘tribe’ in 1980s New York constitutes a landmark artwork of personal contemporary narratives that continues to influence artists today.

Director of John Curtin Gallery, Associate Professor Susanna Castleden says that to have this series on display at a university has a unique resonance with student life:

“It is really important to be able to have an artist of that calibre, particularly being on a university campus within the context of the diverse population of students that we have here, who are often at that stage of life of finding out who their ‘tribe’ is.”

Castelden also noted the meaning of Goldin’s work is part and parcel of its physicality, which is what makes loans and touring exhibitions so important:

“To see these prints in the flesh, they’ve got this shiny depth to them that just cannot be reproduced in a book or online. Through these cibachrome prints, we really do get to see a process that is of a particular time.”

She elaborates:

“I think to be able to see a body of work in the flesh, that someone may not be able to fly over to Canberra to see, is incredibly important. Institutions such as galleries are often criticised for holding a lot of artworks in their basements. To me that is a tragedy. And to me the more we can do to share these amazing objects in these collections, the better.”

Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is touring at John Curtin Gallery exclusively within Western Australia until Sunday September 14.

Each of these exhibitions has a unique resonance and meaning given by the gallery or community it visits, and each artwork a physicality that connects with its audiences. For the community in Wanneroo, having Warhols on display at their back door is a source of immense pride in being part of an international legacy, around which artists and residents can appreciate, interact with, even challenge or draw inspiration from. The exhibitions at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery and John Curtin Gallery, though both displayed in academic settings, respond to their surroundings and are significant to their viewers in different ways. Nan Goldin’s biographical archive speaks very strongly in an environment where students can find a chosen family and support in the discovery of who they are meant to be, while Lawrence Wilson’s exhibitions continue to expand on the national canon of women artists through a unique local lens.

In each instance of engagement with the National Collection program, arts audiences and consumers have reported newfound inspiration, diverse perspectives, and a sense of cultural connection within national and even global contexts. This indicates that initiatives like those offered by the National Gallery of Australia have so much to give Western Australia and having them visit by no means undermines our artistic identity and strength. Instead, these programs provide opportunities for engagement and enrichment with the abundance of creative expression that our state and communities already have to offer.