In 2016, Zoe Paulsen was living in London, dreaming of a new life working and travelling around Europe, when she got a call asking if she wanted to open the Other Art Fair in Sydney. The former advertising executive had come to terms with her career and spent most of her time hanging out with the artist types who were part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Young Ambassador programme.
“You can get stuck in your industry and work can be all you’re doing, so this event gave us a wonderful community to go to shows during the week, meet artists and just interact with the art world,” she says now. “When I was in London, their version of The Other Art Fair was about to open, so I went and made the decision there and then to come back to Sydney and open our version. We didn’t have anything like that at the time.”
After that, a number of opportunities to open more art fairs arose, including Melbourne’s street art fair Can’t Do Tomorrow and Sydney’s Affordable Art Fair. She is also co-founder of the Incognito Art Show, which raises money for Studio A and We Are Studios, both organisations that support artists with intellectual disabilities, by selling postcard-sized artworks for $100, with the artist not revealed until after purchase. (This year’s Archibald Prize winner Laura Jones is another co-founder.) Now she is the new fair director of Sydney Contemporary, one of the country’s most popular art fairs. Here, Zoe Paulsen profiles the artists to keep an eye on.
Australian artists to keep an eye on
Corban Clause Williams
“Corban paints with Martumili Artists in Western Australia, was the first winner of the MA Art Prize ($10,000) and had a sold-out booth last year. He tells stories of land, culture and family.”
Madeleine Pfull
“Madeleine paints these triptychs of housewives and domestic figures from the suburbs of the 1980s, where there are only slight differences in the expression of the figures – she is interested in the representation and mannerisms that form the backstory of the person she is portraying.”
Mia Middleton
“Mia’s works are smaller and she describes them as frozen moments. She sees her paintings as pinpricks of information that allude to a larger whole. She draws from experience and memory – there’s a bit of imagination in them and they have this lush quality.”
Emil Cañita
“Emil is a genderfluid Filipino-Australian artist who explores queer hookup culture and is an advocate for mental health. He takes photographs and overlays them with these handwritten stories that are transferred directly onto the photo.”
Susie Choi
Susie is an Australian artist whose parents are South Korean and she creates the most amazing sculptures. She explores materiality and fibre with this interplay of hard and soft and draws on childhood memories of toys and playgrounds. She has such great artworks with titles too.”
Sydney Contemporary will take place from 5 to 8 September 2024.
