The University of Western Australia Art Collection is moving forward with the addition of new works of Australian art, supported by The University of Western Australia Senate and several major bequests.

Pat Brassington, A spy in the house of love, 2004, digital inkjet print, 85 x 58cm, University of Western Australia Art Collection (image courtesy Pat Brassington and Stills Gallery)

This exhibition has been built over the past three years and contains a selection of works by:

• Brian Blanchflower
• Pat Brassington
• Galliano Fardin
• Simryn Gill
• Rodney Glick
• Fiona Hall
• Winsome Jobling
• Irene Mungatopi
• Tony Nathan
• Jánis Nedéla
• Susan Norrie
• Gregory Pryor
• Marita Sambono
• Robyn Stacey
• Holly Story
• Howard Taylor
• Judy Watson
• Deborah Wurrkidj

This is the first time that John Barrett-Lennard has been able to put together an exhibition at the Gallery solely using works that he has been responsible for purchasing for the Collection since he became Director of the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in 2000. Like all such exhibitions it is somewhat eclectic, but the works themselves are all important additions to the Collection.

Robyn Stacey, Beau Monde (yellow), 2006, type C print, © the artist, The University of Western Australia Art Collection

The context for this exhibition is also significant. The University of Western Australia has collected contemporary Australian art, to greater and lesser degrees, in a fairly determined way from the early 1950s to 1990, when the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery opened. LWAG continued to collect, with a major focus on young and emerging Western Australian artists for the next few years.

From 1995 and for most of the next decade, however, there was very little collected, in part as there were few funds to do so. It has only really been in the past three years that the decline of the collection development has begun to be addressed.

Both the Senate and the Vice-Chancellor are very supportive of collection development, and a major bequest by Leah Cohen has shifted what will be possible in the future. This means that the Director of the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery can now think about really moving the Collection forward –  adding works to it which reflect current art and artists, and which in time will be as significant as anything else in the Collection.