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Inflatable ape looks for love at Sydney Contemporary
A nine-by-20 metre inflatable gibbon looking for love presides over the entrance to the Sydney Contemporary art fair.
While Lisa Roet’s Skywalker Gibbon is searching across the rooftops, the humans down below are looking for artworks, at Australia’s biggest commercial art fair.
“How many of you have ever been to an art fair with a gibbon on the roof? That has to be a first,” founder Tim Etchells told reporters.
Now in its eighth edition, the event usually brings in about $20 million in sales, with 85 galleries and the work of more than 400 artists on display.
Once again an artwork by the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye at the Utopia Art booth is a star attraction and expected to set a price benchmark, with its $3.35 million price tag.
The event attracts hundreds of high-end collectors from across Australia and internationally, Etchells said.
While there is no doubt the global art market is going through a challenging time, there is still a great deal of optimism, he said.
One event in the talks program co-curated by Micheal Do is a discussion about what happens when art meets money.
“It’s not a bad thing, it’s really exciting,” he promised.
A dozen large scale works (including the inflatable gibbon) make up the fair’s installation program, which also features new sculptures, The Cloudgazer and Sensuous Gyre by Patricia Piccinini along with 2019’s Shoeform (Tresses).
Arrernte artist Alfred Lowe is the winner of the $10,000 MA Art Prize for early career artists announced at the fair on Wednesday, for his large scale vessel All Dressed Up I, made with stoneware and raffia.
In 2024 the event features an expanded works on paper section with 26 galleries presenting prints, watercolours and even paper sculptures.
Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks runs until Sunday.
AAP travelled with the assistance of event organisers.
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