Indigenart founder Diane Mossenson has spent the better part of this year renovating her Subiaco gallery, which reopened this month under the new name, The Mossenson Galleries.
Indigenart founder Diane Mossenson has spent the better part of this year renovating her Subiaco gallery, which reopened this month under the new name, The Mossenson Galleries.
The new title reflects a slight change in the direction for the business, which will still focus on exhibiting and representing Indigenart artists but will look to grow its presence in the non-indigenous art world.
Dr Mossenson said calling the gallery’s hanging space The Mossenson Galleries would help the gallery attract non-indigenous artists.
The name change is just one of the many changes in store for Dr Mossenson’s art gallery business.
Dr Mossenson has closed the gallery’s Fremantle operation, which opened in 1999, and will also close the company’s gallery in Carlton, Victoria, in favour of a better space in Collingwood.
Dr Mossenson said renovating the Subiaco gallery prompted her to focus on how she operated her business.
She decided that operating two galleries in Perth “did not merit the energy required” to manage them.
“Being spread across two places in Perth and having the gallery over east shreds your resources too much,” Dr Mossenson told Business Class.
“I thought it was a good time to restructure and focus on building the business rather than building lots of galleries.”
Dr Mossenson said the company’s Carlton gallery would close during the year to make way for office space and provide a venue for special events and functions.
The gallery’s main Melbourne operation will be assumed by its new Collingwood gallery.
“The Collingwood gallery is a better space,” Dr Mossenson said.
“It is also in much more of an art precinct.”
The renovation of the Subiaco gallery highlights the business’s increasing focus on driving international sales.
“We wanted to raise the standard to be a professional gallery on an international basis,” Dr Mossenson said.
The massive renovation has created a new, expanded space that includes two exhibiting galleries, a framing facility and an artist studio.
“We have been very cavalier about it,” Dr Mossenson said.
“We completely gutted the building and built a new building inside.”
She said the gallery had been visited by significant art investors from Europe and Asia as well as visiting journalists.
“Perth has the potential to get that calibre of people coming through so we thought it was time to raise the bar,” Dr Mossenson said.
The Mossenson Galleries appointed a former Western Australian as the gallery’s France-based representative about 18 months ago.
Dr Mossenson said the gallery was keen to build a presence in Europe but its presence was very much in the early stages.
She said it would take some time for her French agent to establish themselves an ethical art representative.
She added that the gallery also needed to establish the reputation of many of its relatively new artists in the European market.
The Mossenson Galleries’ Subiaco site is currently showcasing a selection of work from its Indigenart artists, including pieces from Shane Pickett, who last week won the Australian Public Service Commission’s $40,000 inaugural Drawing Together Act award.
Dr Mossenson said that five of the 38 finalists in the Canberra-based art prize were Indigenart artists.
Indigenart artist Loongkoonan won the $10,000 indigenous award and fellow artist Omborrin took out the $1,000 Commissioner’s Choice Award.
“In the past 18 months, our artists have won about $100,000 in prize money,” Dr Mossenson said.
She said that, during the past two years, more than 100 of the gallery’s artists had their work feature in major art prizes, with the majority of those mainly contemporary market competitions open to both non-indigenous and indigenous artists.
