Artistic collaborations +

Darren Sylvester and Michael Buxton

In the second instalment of the ongoing ‘Collect’ project, bringing contemporary artists together with contemporary collections, ARTAND Australia commissioned artist Darren Sylvester to photograph the Melbourne-based Michael Buxton Collection. Property developer Michael Buxton speaks about building a collection of influential Australian artists: I started The Michael Buxton Collection of Contemporary Art in 1995, with the aim of creating a museum-quality collection based on the six best artists of the day. The first six were Howard Arkley, Mike Parr, Bill Henson, Tony Clark, Peter Tyndall and Peter Booth. The idea was then to review the considered best six every three years. Overseen by our Art Board, this model is still followed, but the review period has become shorter, and now takes place annually. We seek to collect each listed artist in depth and across media, even if this requires going back ten to twenty years to increase the breadth of that particular artist’s representation. This commitment to our artists is one of the defining features of the collection and can be seen in the works by Mike Parr, Juan Davila, Ricky Swallow, Patricia Piccinini, Tony Clark and many others – some forty contemporary Australian artists whose works now form the collection. Numbering about 500 artworks, the collection is primarily housed in what we call The Art Factory, not only our storage facility but also the office of the collection, with other parts on display in our homes and office. Importantly for us there are also many pieces on loan to Australian and overseas institutions for exhibition purposes: for example, a major work by Juan Davila is on loan to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, and one by Hany Armanious has just been loaned to the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. In Australia works have recently been loaned around Melbourne and Victoria to the Monash University Museum of Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, TarraWarra Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Victoria as part of ‘Melbourne Now’ (2013–14), and the Ian Potter Museum of Art. We constantly receive loan requests and are happy to see the artists’ works exhibited regularly. We believe this reflects the significance of the collection. The series Darren Sylvester produced for ARTAND Australia is by far the most artistic approach to photographing parts of the collection that we have seen. These pieces are very much part of our life; we see them on a daily basis in our home. Using light and shadow to add a new excitement to the works, Darren has captured the essence of each in a most compelling way, transforming what we see every day into something different. Invited by ARTAND Australia to photograph Michael Buxton alongside his collection, artist Darren Sylvester here reveals his approach and process: The collection is spread out within Michael Buxton’s house and, as all of us with personal collections know, the very act of displaying artworks in a living space becomes ‘home decorating’ to an extent. We must negotiate the decisions of space, practicality, pets and partners before anything can be positioned. With this in mind, I wanted to show as much of the surrounding interior as possible, photographing each artwork from the furthest perspective to fully reveal the different spatial contexts. I thought it was great that while I was there the collection was being rearranged and updated – I find that once I place an artwork at home, that is where it remains. Moving artworks around allows them to speak to you again and reinvigorate the room. Photographing in this context, I was primarily interested in how the works sat within a domestic setting: how the sunlight streaming through the trees gave the Howard Arkley painting an ever-changing composition; how Gregor Kregar’s Large wise gnome, 2008, caught the external light and became a kind of beacon or shrine to the kitchen; and how a Dale Frank painting provided an apocalyptic backdrop to an Antony Gormley sculpture. The artworks and the space they inhabit began to speak to one another. I use a lot of lights and gels in my own photography, and here I found that highlighting aspects of the rooms in this way gave an interesting twist to a natural shot. I like how dramatic the floors and chairs and walls became – Michael’s red couch was given an accompanying red floor with a floodlit kitchen to match, while the sepia in David Noonan’s untitled 2008 work popped when a cool blue was added to the surrounding concrete walls.