Martin Browne Fine Art Relocates
By Michael Young
An exterior view of Martin Browne Fine Art’s new space in Syndey’s Potts Point neighborhood. Photo by Michael Young for ArtAsiaPacific.
Martin Browne Fine Art is due to move from the gallery’s current location in Potts Point to an Art Deco factory building in Sydney’s gentrified Paddington suburb. The new space will be more than three times bigger than the current gallery, which represents artists such as Guan Wei, Tim McGuire and Peter Atkins, and it will include an indoor sculpture court.
Nestled between Roslyn Oxley9, Australian Galleries and the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation the new Martin Browne Fine Art will bolster the Paddington neighborhood as Sydney’s premier location for buying and seeing contemporary art, leaving Anna Schwartz Gallery’s cavernous factory space in the remote suburb of Redfern well and truly out in the cold. “The move will allow me to do more; to show established names as well as young experimental artists,” Browne said. While renovations have only just begun, Browne expects to open by October, inaugurating the new space with a Guan Wei solo exhibition.
The move has, however, been overshadowed by speculation that Australian Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett bankrolled the purchase of the new building, a claim that Brown flatly denies. Blanchett owns several pieces by Guan, including a two-panel bedroom screen purchased three years ago from Sydney’s then-Sherman Galleries. Browne is Blanchett’s art adviser, personal friend and godfather to one of her children. “But she is not involved in the gallery at all,” Browne stressed.
