So we went and picked up our latest acquisition today which was quite exciting as I had never actually laid eyes on it. This sounds like a really novel approach to collecting art but we had a good idea of what it would look like. We had commissioned Michael Lindeman back in November to make one of his text paintings for us. Michael has been doing a series of these paintings that basically rip off ads in the trading post (pictured attached is his Sulman Prize winning work from 2010).I really enjoyed his show at Sullivan & Strumpf last year and remember trying to picture a link between any of the advertisements in that show and any of the stuff we owned at home. There was a ad for a painting of Gosford Harbour by a Russian artist that I thought might have fit the bill until we had the better idea to ask Michael to make us our own ad. My wife had bought a painting of Sydney Harbour before we moved to the US that I thought should be the inspiration. It was by Ken Knight, an artist who has churned out quite a few of these scenes. Now Knight gained a certain notoriety when a shonky Sydney gallerist bought a few Knight's, signed them as Arthur Streeton and then sold them 3 times to different folks for their self managed super!! Well Ken Coles is out of business but it turns out someone had actually placed an ad for a Ken Knight painting that noted a couple of those points. Michael tracked down this real ad and then basically just did a bit of copyediting so it would fit in a couple of lines. Once we were agreed on the text it was off to the races. And we even got to put our suburb and phone number on it (which is why it ain't pictured here!)
Points - 3 to Michael for a really cool idea executed flawlessly, to quote 'the dude' it really ties the room together. 2 for his gallery that helped make this happen and 1 for Ken, as if we didn't have a Sydney Harbour painting then we wouldn't have needed the ad.
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