Artists and Gallery Concept

Since the gallery was to exhibit a variety of different forms of art, I decided to choose works from a sculptor and a painter to inspire my design of the gallery. Ben Smith is a young emerging Australian artist whose paintings focus on semi anthropomorphic animal interactions. This painting, entitled ‘the voyage for direction’ is one of my favourites. Alasdair MacIntyre is also an Australian based artist, his work is essentially sculptured miniature political cartoons. I liked the simplicity of the form and the honesty of the characters in the work, this piece is entitled ‘Marooned’ and is one of his most recent pieces.

From the artwork themselves I found a few concepts that I wanted to work with. Firstly was the idea of reflection, I liked the way that in both pieces the characters in the work had a reflection of themselves. I wanted the gallery to also have this reflective quality to it, offering new and different ways of viewing the art work. The other concept that I took from the selected artwork was that of water. Apart from its reflective properties I also wanted to explore the notion of rippling waves in the water. My initial concept had several sets of concentric circles all interwoven, like rain falling on a pond, but this created very awkward wall junctions and spaces and I eventually simplified this idea into one drop of water with ripples radiating out.

My last concept that heavily influenced the design was that I not only wanted the space to be a gallery, but it was also to be a cafe. This, in my opinion, would fit better with the Newtown site, allowing anyone to come in off the street, wonder around, have something to eat or drink and discuss the art, then perhaps purchase something on the way out. This concept was to give the gallery a more relaxed feeling, and to tie in better with the site.