Meet the gallerists who Have recently opened new spaces across the region
Sydney art-consultant-turned-gallerist Sally Dan-Cuthbert has worked in the artworld for almost three decades - and successfully at that. Her latest venture is her bravest leap yet. She recently opened a new gallery in Sydney's Rushcutters Bay. The space - a purpose-built, white-cube-cum-contemporary-warehouse - is already attracting significant attention, particularlu for its focus on functional art. We can define functional art - also known as collectable design - as unique objects that are assigned a purpose but may be viewed also as decorative.
The fusion of contemporary art with collectible design is a way of highlighting the ways these different art forms can interact with each other. It's something that Dan-Cuthbert had never intended to realise in a gallery. "I'd been collecting international design for my clients and had started commissiong Australian artists, but I noticed that there wasn't a platform for (collectable design) in this country," she says. "I never intended to open a galery but now that it's happened, it's working really well!"
Dan-Cuthbert was traveling to Art Basel, Design Basel and PAD London - the latter a museum-quality fair of 20th-century art, design and decoratice arts on the 20th-century art, design and decoratice arts on at the same time as Frieze. Each fair was showcasing collectible design. "I felt inspired to open the space so that we could keep our Australian (functional) artists local and actually in the country - rather than them feeling they had to go overseas to find a gallery and purpsue their practice."
