Some mysterious process

Born in Iran, Shirazeh Houshiary moved to London in 1974 to study at the Chelsea School of Art. Initially establishing herself as a sculptor in the 1980s, Houshiary also works across painting, installation and film. Unknowing combines sculptural processes with Islamic ornamental motifs, ultimately resulting in a minimalist aesthetic with deeply spiritual overtones. It is built up on the canvas with the artist alternately applying layers of gesso, a traditional gypsum-based primer, and polishing the surface with sandpaper to create a smooth, delicate finish. Close inspection reveals thousands of linear graphite marks representing the Arabic letter alif (the first letter of the name of god) inscribed repeatedly in a meditation on things beyond knowing.

Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor combines his Asian heritage with Western influences in works that illustrate his interest in negative space and interior forms. Blending minimalism with metaphor, his sculptures often feature reflective surfaces in which viewers, through their mirrored likeness, become active participants in the work.

The use of industrial materials and an exceptionally high degree of technical precision and finish characterise much of Kapoor’s art. This is evident in Untitled which comprises a concave dish of stainless steel coated in a highly reflective blood-red lacquer – a colour Kapoor associates with the body and which is viewed as highly auspicious in India. The reflective surface of the work provokes a sense of disorientation, presenting the viewer with an inverted version of the world.

Regarded as New Zealand’s most important modern painter, Colin McCahon was also a teacher, critic and curator. Although he was never a member of any particular church, religion and Biblical stories were a central tenet of his practice. His work often examines themes of faith, doubt and mortality. Teaching aids 2 (July) exemplifies McCahon’s belief in the power of art to communicate complex stories. The panels resemble a school blackboard inscribed with crosses and numbers up to and including the number 14. McCahon’s stark symbolism suggests a reference to the Christian Stations of the Cross, a series of images found in many Western churches depicting the path Jesus Christ walked through Jerusalem, along the Via Dolorosa to Mount Calvary, on the day of his crucifixion.

The lack of a major work by Colin McCahon was seen as one of the most significant gaps in our collection. This painting was therefore purchased for the collection in 2014 with the enthusiastic support of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation.

In 1968 Kazuko Miyamoto began making minimal and conceptual work influenced, in part, by the artists Sol LeWitt and Adrian Piper whose studios were located in the same building as hers in New York. Miyamoto subsequently formed a strong friendship with LeWitt and became one of his first assistants, working on the production of his large-scale wall drawings and open-cube sculptures (important examples of which are held in the Gallery’s collection, which led the Gallery’s senior curator of international modern and contemporary art, Nicholas Chambers, to propose this acquisition).

Untitled II demonstrates Miyamoto’s interest in the three-dimensional possibilities of drawing. It articulates line and volume in space using thread and nails. According to the artist, the work was first installed on a white brick wall in LeWitt’s apartment, where it helped introduce her work to influential members of the New York art world. Throughout her career and practice, Miyamoto has been involved in discussions of gender politics. In 1972 she was a founding member of AIR Gallery – one of the first all-woman artist-run cooperatives in the United States.

Frank Stella began his series of ‘black paintings’ in 1958. These unembellished, geometrically organised compositions signalled a dramatic break from what he saw as the ‘romance’ and ‘flux’ of the abstract expressionist and colour field painting of the post-war period. They proved a major influence on the development of minimalist art in the 1960s. Untitled comprises two series of concentric squares painted in six off-the-shelf tonal gradations between white and black. The thickness of each square’s border matches the three-inch width of the painting’s stretcher bars. As Stella commented in a 1964 radio interview, ‘my painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object’.

Originally purchased by John Kaldor from Sonnabend Gallery, New York in 1977, Untitled was gifted to the Gallery as part of the John Kaldor Family Collection.

Having graduated from London’s Slade School of Fine Art in 1998, Rachel Whiteread became known for sculptures that give physical form to negative space, making the invisible tangible. In 1993 Whiteread was the first woman to win the Turner Prize for her controversial sculpture Untitled (house) in which she created a concrete cast of the entire interior of a three-story terrace house in East London. Though at first glance her sculptures are often minimal in appearance, further consideration reveals intimate associations with the human body. Comprising three rectangular white forms, Untitled (elongated plinths) calls to mind an arrangement of marble coffins.

Purchased for the Gallery collection in 1999, Untitled (elongated plinths) was the first work by a female artist acquired with the support of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation.