Gallery and Art Consultancy Curatorial+Co unveils expanded space in Sydney

Gallery and Art Consultancy, Curatorial+Co. has moved into a new and expanded physical space in the heart of Sydney’s arts district at 80 William Street in Woolloomooloo.

Opening to the public this Wednesday 3rd May, the gallery launches with exhibitions from painter Susie Dureau and ceramicist Aleisa Miksad, continuing its focus on elevating emerging and mid-career artists.

The gallery joins a new art corridor emerging in Sydney, surrounded by galleries including Chalk Horse, COMA, Jericho Contemporary and King Street Gallery on William just a short walk from Art Gallery of New South Wales. The move cements Curatorial+Co. as a key player in Sydney’s contemporary art scene.

The gallery features an expansive 150 square-metre exhibition space, measuring five metres in height, alongside an additional 150 square-metre storage and office space. The gallery will be fronted by 17 metres of glass, inviting passers-by to view Curatorial+Co.’s eclectic and ever-changing range of works, with displays evolving each week to showcase a variety of new artists.

Founder and Director, Sophie Vander enthused “It’s incredible to see how far we’ve come since I first started Curatorial+Co. from my dining room just seven years ago. Thanks to the team of brilliant women and the talented artists we work with, we have succeeded in establishing an accessible space where artists and art collectors can connect. We were delighted to be approached by the Terrace Tower Group to put down roots in Woolloomooloo among such a vibrant contemporary art scene.”

Originally created as an online enterprise in 2015 Curatorial+Co. has since gone from strength to strength, transitioning to a physical gallery space in Redfern in August 2020 during the height of the pandemic, and defying odds to become a successful gallery praised for its adaptability and unique exhibition approach during uncertain times.  

Vander added “this move to 80 William Street feels like a natural progression for Curatorial+Co., providing a stable and energetic environment for us to grow as a gallery and offer further visibility for the emerging artists we represent, allowing them to take their practice to the next level. The scale of the space will enable us to broaden our remit even further with experimental installations, challenging what a modern gallery space can be.    

The new gallery space will launch with a major exhibition from Susie Dureau running from 3rd to 20th May. The exhibition will showcase new works from her collection, Fathoms, which takes inspiration from the ocean and explores sensory connections between humankind and the earth. Dureau’s practice combines 15th Century European oil painting techniques with contemporary technologies, incorporating spectrographs and acrylics in developmental stages with pure pigments in linseed oil for the finished work. In Dureau’s paintings, motifs of waves, clouds and rocks float through space, challenging Western historical representation of the landscape by presenting familiar motifs in curious ways.

Coinciding with Dureau’s exhibition, Curatorial+Co. will feature new sculptures from emerging ceramicist Aleisa Miksad, taking inspiration from classical ceramics of the Greeks and Etruscans. These ancient forms are reimagined in writhing coils and spiked collars, creating a juxtaposition between ancient and modern ceramics. Evoking early coil pots, a traditional method of building ceramic vessels, made by building up the sides of pots with successive ropes of clay in a circular pattern, Miksad coil-builds her vessels from stoneware and porcelain clay bodies. The meticulous process of coiling these works allows space for exploration and exaggeration of the form as the piece develops.

In the months following the opening, exhibitions will include works from artists including Morgan Stokes, Katrina O’Brien, Ingrid Daniell and Belinda Street.

Conceptual artist Morgan Stokes (exhibiting 24th May-10th June) investigates the painting as an object, opposed to an image, presenting a rumination on the virtual world with each work a response to our escalating entrapment within our screens. Approaching works from a post-internet school of thought with a post-minimalist sensibility, Stokes’ works seek to explore the physicality of painting as well as the way we perceive image itself.

Mixed media artist Katrina O’Brien (exhibiting 14th June-1st July) uses drawing, painting and collage to express her inner monologue and explore the theme of intangible human nature through an expression of thought, emotion, darkness and light, finding the beauty in chaos.  

Painter and visual artist Ingrid Daniell (exhibiting 5th July-15th July) finds context in her painting by using the landscape as a metaphor for our fragile earth, climate change and our human need to belong. Through her painting, she identifies the human and instinctive need to connect to the land, to the ocean, to a natural environment and the landscapes that make up our identity from the past, present and future.

Abstract landscape painter and emerging artist, Belinda Street’s work (exhibiting 19th-29th July) explores the relationship between representation and abstraction with a constantly evolving technique which continually redefines her place within contemporary art culture. Street presents landscape as a remembered feeling, blending literal elements of a particular place with the abstract to evoke the emotions or sensory experience of being in the landscape.

Image top: Curatorial+Co team; Image centre: new works by painter Susie Dureau and ceramicist Aleisa Miksad; image above: Front of new Curatorial+Co on William St, Woolloomooloo. Images Credit: Credit: Anne Graham