annual Emerging Artist Prize
in-person opening night and exhibition since 2019
art works now in the Collection
The Macquarie Group Collection (the Collection) features art in all media, around the theme, The Land and Its Psyche. Its philanthropic focus is to support the endeavours of emerging Australian artists by acquiring and displaying their art in Macquarie offices. The Collection simultaneously encourages conversations around creativity and the importance of art and diversity of thought.
Now comprising more than 920 works, our uniquely curated corporate collection is on display in 43 Macquarie offices worldwide. This year, art from the Collection has been installed in new offices including Paris, Milan and Tokyo, and is regularly rotated around the walls of other buildings.
Following another year of hundreds of submissions, 10 finalists were selected for the 2022 Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize. The prize offers additional support to a new generation of emerging Australian visual artists by broadening their audience, particularly on social media. The finalists’ work featured in an exhibition held at 50 Martin Place and the Prize was awarded to Billy Bain, a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist of Darug descent. This was the first in-person opening night and exhibition for the Collection since 2019.
In the year ahead, as part of the Sydney Metro Martin Place development, the Collection team has been contributing to our new headquarters through publicly commissioned art for the precinct and the relocation of a number of heritage art works for the metro station development site. In addition, a new public art gallery will open in 2024, sitting at the heart of our new global headquarters at 1 Elizabeth Street, Sydney.
We look forward to sharing more in the year ahead.
Jacqui Vanzella, Chair, Macquarie Group Collection
Helen Burton, Director, Macquarie Group Collection
The Macquarie Group Collection’s body of works represents an extraordinary cultural asset that staff around the world can not only enjoy but also take immense pride in.”
The enduring strength of the Macquarie Group Collection is its commitment to acquiring and displaying art from emerging Australian artists. For many artists, this supports a blossoming career and often activates further opportunities.”
In its eleventh year, the Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize in 2022 was won by Billy Bain, who was awarded $A20,000 prize money by guest judge Megan Monte, Director, Ngunggula. As an acquisitive prize, Billy’s sculpture Malcolm, 2022 joined the Collection.
Billy is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist of Darug descent, the traditional Aboriginal people of Greater Western Sydney. His practice unpacks and challenges presumptions of Australian Identity, in this case reimagining the March Past that is held during surf lifesaving carnivals and which in many ways reflects a colonialist attitude of ownership over the beach. Bain’s lifesavers are all of First Nations descent and are reclaiming the often-contested spaces of Australia’s beaches.
The works of all finalists were displayed in a temporary exhibition in Macquarie’s global headquarters, including during Sydney Open, in which approximately 2,000 people toured the building at 50 Martin Place. The works can now be viewed online.
Malcolm, 2022
ceramic terracotta with glaze and underglaze
73 x 35 x 21 cm
An hour out of Alice (landscape at 130kph), 2022 handwoven mulberry silk, naturally dyed with plants and insects
65 x 96 x 3 cm
Paperbark II, 2022
charcoal, tannins, paper mounted on board
170 x 50 x 5 cm
The other seven finalists were:
Cressida Campbell, West of Observatory Hill, 1989, woodblock painting (left) and unique print from the Macquarie Group Collection (right), installed in the National Gallery of Australia.
As well as acquiring art by emerging Australian artists, the Collection is involved in a number of other activities. From time to time we receive requests to temporarily loan art and we endeavour to honour these requests wherever possible.
Such a request from the National Gallery of Australia saw the Collection's print, West of Observatory Hill, 1989, by Cressida Campbell included in the eponymous exhibition. Cressida Campbell is among Australia’s most significant contemporary artists working with painting and printmaking. The final days of the exhibition were sold out.
Pictured: Art Committee members (left to right) Clinton Bradley, Ann Robertson and Alexandra Heysen with Helen Burton, Director of the Collection (second from left) at a recent staff Collection event. Read more about the Macquarie Group Collection
We would like to thank the Macquarie Group Collection Art Committee, which is made up of employee volunteers, and our Curatorial Consultant Felicity Fenner, for their guidance, passion, and dedication over the past year.
The FY2023 Art Committee comprised Jacqui Vanzella (Chair), Clinton Bradley, Alexandra Heysen, Linda Evans (alumni), Anne Murphy Cruise, Robert McRobbie, Ann Robertson, Michael Silman, Chloe Tapp and Belinda Wright.
