30 Years of Arthouse

While a lot of things have changed since the initial idea for Arthouse emerged in a terrace house in Paddington, Sydney, in 1993, what hasn’t changed is director Ali Yeldham’s desire to create an inclusive and welcoming “gallery for the people.”

In late 2024, Arthouse Gallery celebrates thirty years at its McLachlan Avenue, Rushcutters Bay, address but the concept for Arthouse—which originally held the name Arthouse: Art for the People—was born in a corner terrace house in Paddington thirty-one years ago.

The terrace belonged to Ali Yeldham’s mother and had been hastily vacated by a florist who followed their heart overseas, these poetic circumstances provided the opportunity for Yeldham to create a kind of early pop-up gallery. The first exhibition showed painting, sculpture, furniture, jewellery, and glass in a space with coloured, not white, walls. This was something unique in Sydney at the time: more an object gallery than a white cube. Emerging artists from all over Australia were exhibited, and the gallery fast became “a well loved and well visited space,” Yeldham tells me. Early artists shown in Paddington included ceramicist Jenny Orchard and glass artist Mark Douglas.

Seeking a larger space, in late 1994 Arthouse Stockroom took over an old wool warehouse in McLachlan Avenue, changing its name to Arthouse Gallery, shortly after. This was a bold move, but with community support already firmly established at the Paddington gallery, Yeldham took a chance and set up in a neighbourhood better known for mechanics, tyres, and smash repairs than art. The gallery wasn’t completely alone in this industrial locality, with the design headquarters of Mambo just up the road. Yeldham and her mother Diana worked together in the gallery for the first eight years.

The success of Arthouse and its resilience over three decades in a precarious industry is evident in the gallery’s role in developing an emerging art precinct in Rushcutters’ Bay—its current near neighbours have grown to include Cement Fondu, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, and .M Contemporary. Together they have established the popular First Thursdays art walk, a monthly evening event hosting artist talks and inviting new and younger audiences into the gallery.

While First Thursdays has only been going since 2021, the impetus to develop and nurture a more diverse group of collectors in Australia—younger collectors or collectors who never thought they would be art collectors—harks back to Yeldham’s original intention to create an egalitarian and welcoming gallery for the people. This desire to reach out beyond the usual crowd can also be seen in the events held at the gallery including poetry readings, dog-day art days, and the numerous partnerships across the years, for example, with furniture store Space Furniture and fashion labels Sass & Bide, Ginger & Smart, and Country Road.

When I talk to Yeldham, I ask her to tell me about two important and memorable exhibitions the gallery has staged, she starts by saying that “over thirty years there have been 400 exhibitions, and the gallery has shown the work of over 130 artists.” It quickly becomes apparent that she won’t be able to detail only two.

In articulating Arthouse’s focus over the last thirty years, Yeldham says there has “always been an interest in showing a broad range of artists from diverse cultural and geographic locations around Australia. I am interested in artists who are strong storytellers, that have their own authentic language and expression, and a distinct voice and way of seeing the world around them.” Yeldham’s motivations and concerns quickly become apparent too; firstly, her early commitment to exhibiting First Nations artists within the category of contemporary art alongside non-First Nations contemporary artists; secondly, her desire to elevate the work of women artists; and thirdly, the importance of working with her family in the gallery.

The exhibition The Women from Papunya Tula Artists in 2001, followed Hetti Perkin’s landmark Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, in 2000. Arthouse’s significant exhibition “impacted the way [Sydney audiences] saw Western Desert painting, it challenged them to see it as a representation of landscape: the artists painting their connection to Country and deep time.” The exhibition featured the work of ten artists, including luminaries Naata Nungurrayi and Ningura Napurrula. The following year Arthouse featured the work of the men of Papunya Tula. Both exhibitions were curatorial collaborations between Yeldham and Scott Livesay.

In collaboration with Emily Rohr from Short Street Gallery in Broome, Arthouse staged The Great Bidyadanga Artists in 2004. The exhibition featured Daniel Walbidi, Lydia Balbal, Weaver Jack, Alma Webou, Jan Billycan, Margaret Baragurra, and Donald Moko. The exhibition followed a trip taken by Yeldham to Broome in 2001, travelling through the Kimberley with Rohr and going to many communities to spend time with the artists there. Many of the Bidyadanga artists travelled to Sydney on their first visit for this exhibition forming a reciprocal gesture and exchange.

In 2021, the I Am Here exhibition curated with Katherine Hattam was held to parallel the two part National Gallery of Australia exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 To Now, 2021-22. I Am Here profiled forty women artists including Samantha Everton, Natalie Thomas, Elvis Richardson, Renee Cosgrove, Emma Walker, Sarah Brasier, Jo Bertini, Belinda Fox, Kendal Murray, and Moya McKenna. Yeldham elaborates that she has always had a strong focus on the “representation of female artists, coming from the place of art school and a lack of this representation,” she continues that “from the beginning [Arthouse] has had a higher representation of female artists than male. There is no gender pay gap here, there is equal pay for male and female artists . . .” and it’s something she is very proud of.

Important to Yeldham has also been the opportunity to support and work alongside her brother Joshua Yeldham in his career as an artist. Joshua has exhibited with the gallery since the beginning, his practice celebrated this year in an extensive and memorable Sydney Contemporary art fair presentation.

Arthouse Gallery has participated in the Melbourne Art Fair each year since 1996. This year the work of John Prince Siddon, a Walmajarri man from Fitzroy Crossing in the west Kimberley, was featured in a solo presentation titled Our Mother Tongue. This was an extraordinary exhibition by a contemporary artist Yeldham describes as, “tying together a traditional approach to painting, weaving in Indigenous culture, and desert iconography with boab nuts, feathers and wood, 3D printed bullock skulls, and kangaroo pelts in a mash-up of ideas and expression.”

When discussing the most difficult aspects of operating her gallery, Yeldham reveals that the rare event of an artist leaving the gallery can be especially challenging, she says, “each relationship is a love affair, a deep connection that you have with the artist, and devastating on the occasion that an artist leaves the gallery, but I am fortunate to still be working with many artists that we started working with thirty years ago.”
As we finish our interview, Yeldham reflects on being a gallerist for three decades, telling me “I believe that visual art is a truly global language. It has the ability to communicate and reveal our identity as a nation. Through art we see ourselves in terms of our diverse cultural voices and society, our relationship with Country and the natural world, our spirituality and our histories past and present. It has the power to heal and transform perspectives and views through offering new lenses. It has the power to transcend our ordinary lives and let us imagine what is possible.”

To mark this significant milestone for Arthouse Gallery, Ali Yeldham and the team are curating a major exhibition of the gallery’s artists along with a birthday party and other events in December.

This essay was originally published in Artist Profile, issue 69 

EXHIBITION
30 Years of Arthouse Gallery
7 – 21 December 2024 
Arthouse Gallery, Sydney