By Julie Power
“It feels like kismet for me to be back where I started,” says Sebastian Goldspink, a curator and the new coordinator of Woollahra Council’s first permanent art gallery.
As fate would have it, the former local library where Goldspink first read about art decades ago re-opens on Thursday as a permanent and public art gallery and cultural hub, known as the Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf.
Gallery coordinator of the new Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf Sebastian Goldspink.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Like Goldspink, a former actor on the long-running television series Heartbreak High, the former library building has had a few lives. Known as St Brigid’s, it was built as a grand home for one of Sydney’s “universal providers”, the Lassetter retailing family, in 1897.
Later it served as the headquarters for the highly controversial royal commission into Soviet espionage, known as the Petrov affair, a theatre and an art centre.
The building wasn’t a convent, as the name suggests, but named by the Lassetters after Ireland’s second most popular saint. As well as founding monasteries, Saint Brigid famously established a school of art that taught metalwork and illumination.
The new Woollahra Gallery opens with an exhibition of works marking the 20th anniversary of the Woollahra small sculpture prize.
The first known image of St Brigid’s taken in 1899. The 122-year-old heritage St Brigid’s building transformed into new Sydney gallery opening with the 20th Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize.
This year’s winner is Rhonda Sharpe’s work Desert Woman with Mustache, Cooloman and Pretty Clothes. Sharpe’s work will be acquired for $25,000 as part of the permanent collection.
Ms Sharpe, a Luritja woman and Yarrenyty Arltere artist who lives and works in Alice Springs, told The Herald she was inspired by a woman she saw walking in the bush.
The winner of the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize exhibition 2021 is Rhonda Sharpe’s Desert Woman with Mustache, Cooloman and Pretty Clothes. Credit: Courtesy of Rhonda Sharpe and Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize
A two-time winner of the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Ms Sharpe “couldn’t believe it was true” when she was told she had won the award.
“So, I thought, why did I win, but I really love making soft sculptures, I always get ideas of things to make! I’m really proud to win this award because sewing makes me happy.”
She planned to use the winnings to buy a gym membership. Along with sewing, cleaning her house and doing her art, it was one of the things that made her happy.
With only a single criterion, that each entry is less than 80cms in any dimension, selecting a shortlist from 844 diverse entries from around the world was difficult, said one of three judges Dr Lara Strongman, a director at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Selecting the winner was comparatively easy and unanimous, she said. The judges had been looking for “originality and presence in the gallery” and Rhonda Sharpe’s work was “utterly distinctive, unlike anything else.”
Ms Sharpe’s work also made the judges laugh. Jenny Kee, another judge, said, “It takes sculpture to another dimension in its vibrancy, its originality, its humour and naive beauty.”
Winning artist Rhonda SharpeCredit: Sarah Andrews
Sydney-artist Mechelle Bounpraseuth received special commendation for her sculptures of slightly misshaped condiment bottles. The 2021 Mayor’s Award was given to Kate Coyne.
NSW artist Michael Harrell’s work, Politics?, was highly commended. A twist on the Three
Wise Monkeys, it shows naked world leaders, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong- un, - presiding over death and destruction.
Susan Wynne, Mayor of Woollahra, said Woollahra was excited to open the doors to this fantastic new public gallery for the community to enjoy.
For the new coordinator Goldspink, who is also curator for the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, the new job was like coming home.
Sebastian Goldspink says working as the Gallery coordinator of the new Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf was like coming home.Credit: Rhett Wyman
The old library was “the first place I really looked at art books in my life,” said Goldspink.
The new gallery includes a reading library of art books including those donated by the estate of the art dealer Eva Breuer and the outgoing director of the MCA Liz Ann Macgregor.
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