The Clayton Utz Art Partnership brings together a unique collaboration between two outstanding Australian artists and our firm.
Read more about this collaboration in an article published in Issue 43 of Artist Profile.

Each exhibition presents an opportunity to showcase the work of two contemporary artists in the offices of Clayton Utz. Our exhibition space offers a unique visual art experience for clients to get up close and personal with an amazing array of artwork. The uniquely curated program allows both artists to explore and display their work in one of Australia's leading corporate environments. Guests visiting the exhibition will have an opportunity to explore the artwork in an intimate and innovative environment.

Complementing the exhibition is an Artist-in-Residence experience within the Clayton Utz offices. This opportunity provides both artists and Clayton Utz a collaborative platform to explore the artistic process and allows us and our clients exclusive access to the artist and the creative process.

The Clayton Utz Art Partnership is a truly exciting initiative and demonstrates our pride as an Australian firm committed to the cultural sector, and the broader creative communities in which we live and work. We hope you enjoy being part of it.

Current Sydney Exhibition

The Clayton Utz Art Partnership is now in its fifth year, and our tenth Sydney exhibition features artists Ken Done and Annalisa Ferraris.

Ken Done is one of Australia’s most iconic and well-known artists, partnered with young career artist Annalisa Ferraris. Ken's works are widely recognised as holding a unique position in Australia's cultural heritage. In many parts of the world he has come to symbolise Australia and Australians: creative, optimistic and bold. Annalisa's works also depict nature and architecture but, in contrast to Ken, in a geometric and minimalist way, artfully using flat planes and shadows to create depth.

Annalisa is a Sydney-based artist, whose hard edge minimalist works are refined by sculptural depth, a developed palette and love of brutalist architecture. Her architectural vistas and iconic pools successfully blur the line between sculpture and painting, challenging the execution of shadows and creating depth perception that is at once taunting and calming.

Artists: Ken Done and Annalisa Ferraris

 

Ken Done

 

Annalisa Ferraris

Born in 1940, in Sydney, Ken left school at 14 to enter the National Art School in East Sydney. After 5 years study, he commenced a highly successful career as an art director and designer in New York, London and Sydney. At the age of 40, after painting for many years, he gave up his advertising career to become a painter full-time. Since then, he has held over 100 one-man shows, including major exhibitions in Australia, Europe, Japan and the USA, and his works have been shown in the Archibald, Sulman, Wynne, Blake, and Dobell Prizes.

Major projects in a very diverse career include the painting of a BMW Artcar, the cover of Japanese magazine Hanako for over 15 years, a series of works for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies programs of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and the total decorative scheme for the Garden Restaurant at the Powerhouse Museum, in Sydney. In 1994, a major retrospective of Ken Done’s work “Ken Done: the art of design” was mounted by the Powerhouse Museum and in 2002 the Museum acquired his commercial art and design archive of more than 300 items.

Annalisa's architectural vistas and iconic pools successfully blur the line between sculpture and painting, challenging the execution of shadows and creating depth perception that is at once taunting and calming. This more minimalist development was an inevitable trajectory for Ferraris. Drawing on the great minimalist masters that have come before her, Ferraris finds a quiet calmness in the abstract, which translates to the affectual pull of her serenely sculptural paintings. Ferraris delves into the conceptual, prompting her viewer to question their perceptions, by skilfully creating the world anew through her quiet, minimalist lens.

Recently, she has explored her audience’s perception as it relates to familiarity and imagination. She creates worlds that feel familiar, yet exotic, reminiscent of travel and places once visited, dreamt of returning to, and longed to experience. For Ferraris, it is less about a particular subject and more about a feeling. Formal construction takes a backseat and instead acts as a conduit for something entirely cerebral and emotive. Ferraris leaves it up to the viewer to construct a sense of place and memory: “I want to evoke more with less, to take us places as far and wide, as limitless as our imagination- with a map that gives as little information possible.” 

Catalogues:

Photo gallery: