The acquisition of works for the Vizard Foundation Art Collection of the 1990s commenced in September 1993 as a collaborative project between the Vizard Foundation, the Ian Potter Museum of Art and the Department of Fine Arts of the University of Melbourne (now the School of Culture and Communication). Its objective was to support Australian artists through the ongoing acquisition, display and educational promotion of their work. The art works in the collection are on long-term loan to the University of Melbourne, where they are displayed at the Ian Potter Museum of Art.
The Ian Potter Museum of Art has been pleased to be able to continue to work with this important collection through the Potter’s series of Vizard Foundation Contemporary Artist Projects (2011 – 2016), a creative initiative of the Vizard Foundation which offered mid-career and senior artists a significant grant to make new work, and to take risks and explore new directions in their practice. This project enabled six major projects by significant Australian artists: Jenny Watson (2011), Geoff Lowe/A Constructed World (2012), Philip Brophy (2013), Stephen Bush (2014), Julie Rrap (2015) and Susan Norrie (2016).
The Vizard Foundation Art Collection of the 1990s includes 124 works by 51 Australian artists presenting key artistic developments of the decade. The Collection addresses major theoretical issues in contemporary art of the time including: the relationships between art and mass culture; art and technology; art and identity and art and gender. In particular, the Collection focuses on issues of identity more broadly within Australian culture, in terms of gender, sexuality and ethnicity, and how these operate in society.
This website tells the story of this important collection and contemporary Australian art in the 1990s, with texts by some of Australia’s most experienced writers and interviews with artists represented in the Collection.
