Capturing Wollongong's changing landscape

One of Wollongong Art Gallery’s main functions is to develop and maintain the Wollongong Art Gallery Collection. Our Collection focuses on four main areas of art and cultural material:

• Aboriginal art from around Australia including the work of local and South Coast First Nation artists,
• Early Australian Art with a particular focus on Illawarra landscapes pre: 1935,
• Contemporary Australian Art, and
• Asian Ceramics, objects, and furniture.

The Collection has the capacity to tell many varied stories that help illuminate who we are as a community. We are continually developing our art collection by acquiring works that add and enhance our ability to tell these important cultural and community stories.

Our collection of early Illawarra landscapes gives us a view into the past and the vastly changing landscape since European settlement. Likewise, artworks created by contemporary artists today will be the historical works of future residents and provide a window into their pasts. To help capture the current local landscape we have started actively acquiring works that present unique perspectives of our surrounds as they appear today.

One such recent acquisition is by artist Catherine O’Donnell who was commissioned to create a work that looks at Wollongong’s changing urban landscape. Catherine presented the Gallery with several different options and possibilities. The work selected was of the Nikolovski Lawyers building, which is a perfect example of the type of commercial architecture that has dominated the city over the past 50 years, and one of the last buildings of its kind.

This commission is a timely one, as the Nikolovski building is in the process of being demolished to make way for more a contemporary building that will better meet the needs of our community and align with current architectural trends.

We are excited to add this evocative work to our Collection as a record of Wollongong as it was, and particularly with knowledge of its forthcoming demise.

Artist Statement

"My practice focuses on the urban landscape, representing the commonly overlooked buildings in an abstracted form. I draw buildings that I regard to be beautiful or interesting in order to highlight the power of ordinary, commonplace architecture in the urban landscape.

In the Nikolovski Lawyers building, what I see most clearly is the uncomplicated geometric construction and simplicity of form and it is this which captures my imagination. I used the representational forms of this iconic Wollongong building to explore its compositional potential and underlying symmetry, while at the same time, reframing this in my drawings in terms of order, abstraction, and geometry.

My ambition is to elevate this building through aesthetic contemplation to contradict the ordinariness of its existence, emphasizing the underlying elegance of this unique, iconic building."

Catherine O’Donnell, 2024.

Page image: Catherine O’Donnell, Nikolovski Lawyers, 2023, charcoal on graphite on paper, 52 X 102cm unframed, 65 x 116cm (frame), Purchased 2023.