Artful investment at Carriageworks

In exciting news Anna Schwartz, director and founder of Anna Schwartz Gallery has gifted $500,000 towards the development of a new five-year series of visual art projects at Carriageworks. Global in its outlook, the bequest demonstrates a concerted interest to bringing leading international and national contemporary artists to the Australian Public.

And the first cab off the rank? Ghana based artist El Anatsui will be unveiling his large-scale installation El Anatsui: Five Decades in January 2015, presented in association with Sydney Festival.

On the potential of this exciting initiative, Lisa Havilah, Director of Carriageworks stated, “We’re delighted to be working with Anna Schwartz on this long-term project which represents a visionary investment in contemporary visual art. This bequest will leave a lasting legacy and develop the international profile of visual art in this country.  These new visual art projects will build upon Carriagework’s existing commitment with a series of large-scale installations and exhibitions that will sit at the leading edge of contemporary practice.”

Discussing the motivation and direction underlying her generous bequest, Anna Schwartz stated, “I am thrilled to work with Lisa Havilah to develop the programme in the gallery space I created at Carriageworks to provide a major opportunity for Australian and International artists and their audiences. By combining forces, we will be able to deliver unprecedented experiences in a unique context which optimizes the attributes of a private and a public gallery.”

Leading the charge, El Anatsui: Five Decades will be presented in the Anna Schwartz Gallery space and throughout the Carriageworks precinct. The first major exhibition of Anatsui’s art in Australia, the diverse and elusively undefinable practice will feature works from the 1970s until present.

Born in Anyako, Ghana, Anatsui engages in the practice of abstract art, which is shaped by his local vernacular of Ghana and Nigeria. Using everyday materials – discarded and repurposed – his complex assemblages are made up of wood, aluminium printing plates, discarded tin boxes and liquor bottle tops.

Suggestive of the contours of landscape, cartography, and the language of abstract painting, the ceramic and wooden sculptures visually articulate the histories of colonial and post-colonial Africa alongside themes of consumption, waste and the environment.

Stay tuned for January 2016. Free to the public, be invited to explore Anatsui’s world through his paintings, woodcarvings, ceramics and glorious hanging sculptures situated throughout the gallery, and Carriageworks.

EXHIBITION
El Anatsui: Five Decades
January 2016
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Carriageworks

Courtesy the artist, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; and Carriageworks, Sydney.