Qantas Curates: high-flying project offers bags of local talent

Qantas has worked with 16 artists and teams to produce artworks for reproduction on its in-flight amenity bags.

Kate Banazi’s work has been chosen for Qantas Curates, promoting Australian artists. Hollie Adams

Sydney artist Kate Banazi loves the handmade texture of screen-prints: the combination of carefully executed design and the accidents of chance that produce an individual work.

“Each one will always be individual because it is ink through mesh,” she says at her studio at Sydenham, in Sydney’s inner west. “I love the overlaps and the texture you get … It becomes more of a painterly medium.”

One of Banazi’s designs called Ada’s Algorithm — named for 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace — has been chosen for a new project at Qantas that will put a piece of Australian art in the hands of every international business-class passenger.

In a project called Qantas Curates, the airline has worked with 16 individual artists and teams to produce works for reproduction on its in-flight amenity bags.

Other selected artworks include Billie Justice Thomson’s painting Fairy Bread and Jon Campbell’s design Maaate, which may introduce foreign travellers to proper Strine.

The project involved art and design experts including Adam Worrall from the National Gallery of Australia, who says he was looking for strong graphic images that would reproduce well on the kit bags.

Qantas supports the arts through partnerships with companies such as the Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre, and previously has displayed indigenous art on the fuselage of its aircraft. It recently has entered into a partnership with Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Britain’s Tate to acquire Australian art.

Qantas brand, marketing and corporate affairs head Olivia Wirth says the new amenity bags — which passengers often keep as makeup bags or pencil cases — showcase Australian creativity. “It’s a canvas to help share some of the fantastic talent we have in Australia,” she says.