Established in 2006, the Melbourne Art Foundation Commission program provides a living artist with a rare opportunity to realise a large-scale work for unveiling at Melbourne Art Fair, which is later gifted to a prominent Australian institution. 

Previous partners in the program have included AGWA, ACMI, HOTA Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, NGV, QAGOMA, the University of Queensland Art Museum, MCA, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Australia; and artists Julie Rrap, Kaylene Whiskey, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Ronnie van Hout, Michael Parekōwhai, David Griggs, Peter Hennessey, Jon Campbell, Ian Burns, and Mikala Dwyer.

The eleventh commission of the program will be unveiled at Melbourne Art Fair 2025

2024

Julie Rrap, SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders)

Julie Rrap, SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders), 2024, cast bronze, edition 1/3, installation view. Photo: Griffin Simm. Melbourne Art Fair 2024.

The 10th Melbourne Art Foundation Commission, in partnership with the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) and supported by Artwork Transport and Creative Australia, was awarded to Julie Rrap, one of Australia’s most recognised female artists. 

The bronze sculptural work, SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders), was unveiled at the 17th iteration of Melbourne Art Fair. Of the work, Rrap said, “While SOMOS echoes the “heroic” tradition of bronze figurative sculpture, it subverts that history by representing an older female body traditionally rendered invisible. This work strongly consolidates many of the concerns that have preoccupied me in my practice over the last 40 years and to have the opportunity to create SOMOS as a major work for this commission and the Art Gallery of Western Australia is a career highlight and one which will create an incredibly important conversation.”

Julie Rrap is widely considered to have contributed to the foundations of contemporary feminist art in Australia. Working for over four decades with a range of different mediums, Rrap’s work challenges, subverts and reinterprets the definition of women and their image in surprising ways, often using her own nude body to do so. 

SOMOS will appear in Julie Rrap: Past Continuous at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), before arriving at its permanent home in the AGWA collection. 

2022

Kaylene Whiskey, Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place

Kaylene Whiskey in her studio. Courtesy of Iwantja Arts. Photography Meg Hansen.

In partnership with ACMI, the 2022 Foundation Commission was awarded to Kaylene Whiskey, a Yankunytjatjara artist from Indulkana, a remote Indigenous community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, South Australia. This was the first time that Melbourne Art Foundation commissioned a moving image work, and the first commission awarded to an Indigenous artist.

Responding to the theme, Djeembana/Place, Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place is a celebration of her home community, Indulkana, and the kungkakunpu (strong women) who live there. ABBA was the soundtrack while creating the work. At its centre is Whiskey, a dancing queen with an entourage of seven women from her community in Indulkana, who act as back-up for a superstar tearing through red-sand roads in a Toyota Land Cruiser, waving an Aboriginal flag that billows like a superhero’s cape. Along for the party are actual superheroes and superstars – Wonder Woman and Tina Turner materialise in Whiskey’s live-action dreamscape, appearing via vivid animation rendered in her lively, singular style.

Unveiled at the 16th edition of Melbourne Art Fair in 2022, Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place has now found its permanent home in ACMI’s collection. 

2020

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Double-faced avatar with blue figure

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Double-faced avatar with blue figure, 2020, bronze, concrete, fibreglass and neon. Collection, HOTA Gallery. 

Commissioned in partnership with HOTA Gallery and supported by Artwork Transport, the 2020 Commission was awarded to Sri Lankan-born, Gadigal Country/Sydney-based artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran.

Known for creating rough-edged, vibrant, new age idols, Nithiyendran’s sculptures explore the politics of sex, the monument, gender and religion. His specific references to multi-gendered icons mythologise gender-fluid realms of new possibilities.

Nithiyendran’s work is held in various collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Ian Potter Museum of Art and the Shepparton Art Museum. 

The six metre high, site specific work, Double-faced avatar with blue figure now welcomes visitors at the entrance to HOTA Gallery, newly opened in 2021.

2018

Ronnie van Hout, Surrender

Ronnie van Hout, Surrender, 2018, Commission by Bendigo Art Gallery in partnership with Melbourne Art Foundation and supported by Artwork Transport, Installation view, Melbourne Art Fair 2018.

Supported by Bendigo Art Gallery and Artwork Transport, the Melbourne Art Foundation 2018 Commission was awarded to prominent Melbourne-based artist Ronnie van Hout. 

Surrender features two towering figures of more than 2.4 metres in postures of submission. Viewers might immediately think of the evening news and events in the Middle East. Or teenagers cowering in an American school. Or even our own submission to the barrage of violent news we are pummelled with every day. However, in a typically mischievous tactic, Ronnie van Hout’s forlorn figures are in fact sourced from toy soldiers, the kind regularly massacred by six-year-olds.

Van Hout, a bold and brash multimedia artist, who combines the surreal with the social and the serious with slapstick, tends to confound viewers. His sculptural works are known for their social narrative and drama. Surrender is ambitious in scale and concept. The figures’ monumental scale is uncanny – especially as they are otherwise life-like and speaks to the idea of the public monument or memorial.

2014

Mikala Dwyer, The weight of shape

Mikala Dwyer, The Weight of Shape, 2014, acrylic, fibreglass, copper, ceramic, bronze, brass, stainless steel, steel and rope, dimensions variable. Melbourne Art Fair 2014. Commission by Melbourne Art Foundation and donated to the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Image courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne).

The weight of shape is a delicate balance of ideas borrowing from science, architecture and mythology. The sculpture challenges the audience to navigate the interior of the mind, and physically negotiate and rearrange the distinct departments of thinking.

The carefully suspended objects created from a range of materials – acrylic, fibreglass, copper, ceramic, bronze, brass, stainless steel and rope – are representations of fragments from the productive zone of consciousness.

Dwyer’s practice over the last three decades has been notorious for challenging the limits of sculptural practice, incorporating installation, performance, video and photography. Seen as all-inclusive sculpture, Dwyer’s work requires the audience to participate and find their own meaning within the magic, memory, history and sexuality she evokes.

The Weight of Shape was funded by the Melbourne Art Foundation in 2014 and gifted to the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

2012

Ian Burns, Clouds

Ian Burns, Clouds, 2012, installation view, found object sculpture including ladders, wood, lights, magnifying glasses, tables, bowls, toys, carpet, umbrellas, motors, TV’s, sound systems, generating live video and audio. Melbourne Art Fair 2012. Commission by Melbourne Art Foundation and donated to the Art Gallery of South Australia. Image courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne). 

One of Australia’s most exciting international exports Ian Burns created Clouds for the 2012 Melbourne Art Foundation Commission. 

Against the cultural backdrop of the increasingly virtual nature of the screen-based image, Ian Burns presented a sculptural work that links the technological screen with embodied experience. An imposing sculptural form, Clouds presents the viewer with a pseudo-cinematic series of scenes that suggest a narrative but without end. Generated within the sculpture itself, the scenes are based on images of motion, specifically flight: ladders, toys, tables, lights, salad bowls and other everyday items are repurposed towards the live re-creation of imagery of the clichéd cinematic sublimity of air travel.

Displaying images alongside the process of their very production, Burns builds a diorama of our contemporary visual world. By the inventive nature of the construction, and the use of commonplace objects to create believable live video renditions of apparently real footage, Burns’ work encourages a playful spirit of investigation.

His new work for Melbourne Art Fair 2012, Clouds, was created in the months preceding the Fair at acclaimed Yarra Valley winery Domaine Chandon where Ian Burns was Artist in Residence.

Ian Burns is an Australian artist based in New York. Named recently in the ‘Future Greats’ edition of Art Review Magazine (UK), he is an artist on the move, with a forthcoming solo exhibition and commission at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne and an exhibition at mother’s tankstation, Dublin along with the Melbourne Art Fair Commission. Ian Burns is a current recipient of a Queensland College of Art, Griffith University Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship. Burns creates what are best described as kinetic assemblages, combining an amalgam of found objects from two dollar shops and department stores like Ikea, with digital technologies, flat screens, tiny closed-circuit spy cameras and cannibalised bits of everyday household ‘stuff’.

Clouds was commissioned by the Melbourne Art Foundation for the Melbourne Art Fair 2012 and was donated to the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

2010

Jon Campbell, Stacks On

Jon Campbell, Stacks On, 2010, Light boxes: Twelve light boxes presented in three stacks. Aluminium, two pac enamel spray paint, acrylic and vinyl faces, each stack approximately 400 cm (h), each light box between 60 x 40 x 20cm and 200 x 100 x 90cm. Banners: Twelve screen-printed and hand stitched banners. Water based printing ink, cotton, linen, damask and towelling, each banner from 350 x 100cm to 220 x 120cm. Melbourne Art Fair 2010. Commission by Melbourne Art Foundation and gifted to Museum of Contemporary Art and part purchase supported by the Coe and Mordant families, 2010.
 

As one of Australia’s most exciting contemporary artists, Jon Campbell created Stacks On, a massive assemblage of light boxes and banners, adorned with sewn and painted elements leading us from the northern entrance to the majestic dome of the Royal Exhibition Building.

Taking materials from the everyday and assembling them to match his personal sensibilities, Campbell has been called an Australian ‘pop painter’.

Paintings, cut-outs, banners, neons and placards demonstrate his love of suburbia and its vernacular, popular music and its attendant culture, printing, design and advertising, sport and youth culture. His works define not only the look of the world in which Campbell lives, but the accent and humour of its language and how signs can articulate its culture and history. These signs contain text that are sometimes loud and boisterous but never offensively so. They have a beauty about them that encourages belief.

With his use of words and phrases as imagery, Campbell captures aspects of his culture that are both lived and observed, that are local, national and international, and – can be spoken, written, sung and read. Campbell’s masterfully realised signs, cut-outs, banners and placards demonstrate his love of the vernacular and popular music and its attendant culture – printing, design and advertising, sport and youth culture. His works define not only the look of the world in which he lives, but the accent and humour of language and how signs can articulate culture and history.

Stacks On was commissioned by the Melbourne Art Foundation for the Melbourne Art Fair 2010 and donated to the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

2008

Peter Hennessey, My Humvee

Peter Hennessey, My Humvee (Inversion therapy), installation view, 2008, wood, automotive enamel paint and aluminium overall, 500 x 210 x 180 cm. Melbourne Art Fair 2008. Commission by Melbourne Art Foundation and donated to the University of Queensland Art Museum. Image courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

My Humvee (inversion therapy) is a full sized, highly detailed rendition of a M1025 HMMWV, more commonly known as a Humvee. The object, the contemporary version of the military jeep, is balanced on its nose and rendered in black painted plywood.

At first glance, the object’s blunt proportions and monochromatic surface lend it a sense of mournful monumentality. Looming almost 6 metres in height, its nature is obscured by its dark exterior, lending it a deceptively minimal elegance. However on closer inspection its vehicular features become more obvious, and the towering block resolves into an upturned jeep. The work is detailed, very accurate and actual size but produced using processes and materials that ‘perform’ the object rather than reproduce it.

Peter Hennessey is an artist whose experimental work is largely based on model making and revolves around an investigation into ‘objects that we all know well but only virtually, through media and can never have an actual physical experience of..’

My Humvee (inversion therapy) was commissioned by the Melbourne Art Foundation for Melbourne Art Fair 2008 and was donated to the University of Queensland Art Museum.

David Griggs, Frog boy’s dissertation into a new karaoke cult

David Griggs, Frog boy’s dissertation into a new karaoke cult, 2008, synthetic polymer paint on sewn canvas with aluminium frame, wood and medium density fibreboard, rope and projected DVD: 34.54 minutes, colour, silent, 630 x 620 x 860cm (installed); tent wall: 286 x 2520cm. Melbourne Art Fair 2008. Commission by Melbourne Art Foundation and donated to the Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. Image courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 (Gadigal Country/Sydney).

David Griggs’ Frog boy’s dissertation into a new karaoke cult, a full-scale circus tent, is crafted entirely from paintings on canvas. The imagery painted on the exterior side of the canvas tent is a collection of tough Holy Cross imagery that details blood lettings, crucifixions, portraiture and military security. Inside the circus tent a large floating video screen documents a performance by Griggs filmed in and around Manila featuring street dogs, gang members, street beggars, Halloween kids and tattooed locals and a fibreglass statue of Jesus Christ.

The work was inspired by fun fairs, carnivals/circuses/freak shows in the Philippines and a 21-year-old man who was a sideshow act at one of the carnivals: Frog Boy. The paintings covering the tent were painted from photographs Griggs took exploring the notion of people living on the edge like Frog Boy. Gang members, street kids, Halloween performers, prostitutes, and foreigners all have a place on the walls of the circus tent. The video work was inspired by an old man living in one of the slum areas in Manila who told Griggs that the people living in the slums do not need more money they need more faith. 

David Griggs has a strong interest in exploring the darker side of humanity through the medium of photography, painting, video, sculpture and travel. In 2005 he undertook an Asialink Residency in Manila, Philippines. It was here that the artist’s interest in exploring marginalised and repressed communities provided inspiration for the Melbourne Art Fair 2008 Artist Commission.

David Griggs’ Frog boy’s dissertation into a new karaoke cult was commissioned by the Melbourne Art Foundation for Melbourne Art Fair 2008 and was donated to the Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

2006

Michael Parekōwhai, Cosmo McMurtry

Michael Parekōwhai, Cosmo McMurty, 2006, installation view Melbourne Art Fair 2006, woven nylon substrate, pigment, 330 x 180 x 280cm. Melbourne Art Fair 2006. Commission by Melbourne Art Foundation and donated to the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. 

Michael Parekōwhai’s Cosmo McMurtry is caught in the headlights or perhaps he’s looking down the barrel of a shotgun. Either way, he’s running scared. He seems to be the underdog, but don’t be fooled by his cute exterior.

Rabbits are perennially popular as cartoon characters (Bugs, Roger, Bunnikins etc.) but they are also a highly problematic presence in rural Australia and New Zealand where escalating populations have made them a noxious pest. They’re a monumental problem for local fauna and flora. The title of this sculpture is based upon New Zealand actor Jim Cosmo, best known for his portrayal of the archetypal ‘man of the land’. Cosmo McMurtry stands for the individual and the masses, hero and villain, hunter and hunted. It’s hard to know whether he’s a good guy or not.

Parekōwhai also made a brother for Cosmo McMurtry called Jim McMurtry, an inflatable rabbit of the same scale, this time playing dead. Jim was first exhibited at the Gwangju Biennale in Korea in 2004.

Parekōwhai’s practice visually shifts quite radically and each work typically accommodates a number of interpretations, each distinct from the other. His sculptures and photographs operate within the languages of Minimalism and Pop Art. He takes basic abstract concepts such as colour, scale, number and surface quality and maps them in complex ways onto stories of art history, popular culture, cultural identity, politics and autobiography.

Cosmo McMurtry was funded by the Melbourne Art Foundation and former Board members, Christopher Hodges, Leo Christie OAM, Richard Frolich, Jan Minchin, Martin Beaver and Roslyn Oxley, the Myer Foundation, the National Gallery of Victoria and Michael Lett.