Celebrating 10 Years of Saint Cloche
This year marks Saint Cloche’s 10th birthday. To celebrate, Kitty has curated our largest group exhibition yet, featuring past, present, and future artists across two separate spaces: our iconic corner in the heart of Paddington and nearby Comber Street Studios.
'Oasis' draws inspiration from Kitty’s most cherished creative era, the 1970s - a time of new artistic movements and a burgeoning interest in individuality and counterculture themes. By definition, 'Oasis' is a green or fertile area in an arid desert region, or a refuge offering solace and sanctuary.
Inspired by our partnership with Tiffany & Co., the exhibition is, in part, an homage to Elsa Peretti, a pioneer of modernist minimalism known for her biomorphic designs with Tiffany & Co. Her renowned Spanish retreat, an oasis filled with treasured mementos, epitomises the measured, less-is-more aesthetic that influenced her iconic artistry.
This year marks Peretti’s 50th anniversary with the iconic jewellery house. This handpicked group of artists offers new perspectives and distinctive styles, challenging conventional beauty norms and pushing boundaries. In the constantly evolving realm of contemporary art, fresh talent revitalises the field, ensuring its dynamic future and ongoing innovation.
It has always been Saint Cloche’s mission to become a hub for creatives to commune and collaborate. With an ethos of building community, we create a living, breathing oasis for our kinfolk to find sanctuary and inspiration. Thanks to all our artists and supporters for their kinship throughout the years - creatives that span the gamut from the diverse worlds of art, fashion, food, architecture, design, nature- lovers, activists, and changemakers.
Special Guest Speaker - Michael Fitzgerald, novelist & senior editor at the Powerhouse Museum, opened the exhibition….
“Each day as I catch the 389 to work at Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo, I look forward to the moment when the bus swings off Glenmore into Brown and glides the corner to MacDonald Street. What will I see through the always-inviting 180-degree turn of steel-framed glass? Will it be another signature salon hang, a product launch, or installation day – perhaps my favourite, when the gallery is in creative flux, a constant state of drama and becoming. When the bus swings by I always look. It’s hard not to. For like its name, Saint Cloche is a transparent vessel that reveals itself with a new exhibition every fortnight: 265 in fact since it first opened, showcasing the work of more than 700 new and established artists over the past decade. It is the antithesis of the art world’s cool white cube, and more like a kaleidoscope. I think that’s why I keep looking. It’s always changing and never static.
The gallery’s founder and curator Kitty Clark, who trained in design and formerly worked as a buyer for Gucci, knows how to draw the eye in and, most importantly of all, to hold it. Like Andy Warhol, who also knew a thing or two about the psychology of window displays, she isn’t afraid of blurring the borders between art, fashion and design, between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, and over the ten years I’ve seen graffiti, street wear and neon take refuge in her gallery, painting shows paired with ceramics, and forests of flowers and feathers to get tangled in courtesy of Tracey Deep. Like Warhol, Kitty adores the colour pink. And reflecting back over five presentations at Sydney Contemporary, when art fairs can dangerously blur into one, I still remember the salmon walls of her salon hang of Evi O’s paintings in 2019 which, needless to say, sold out. Congratulations on ten years Kitty, and for creating an art ‘Oasis’ here in Paddington, and may the constant state of drama and becoming of this transparent, transforming space never stop.
THANK YOU……
to our Sunset Sessions superstars, DJ JNRSTAX, who entertained us with a contemporary mix of 70’s vinyl beats, and to Cocoa the Conscious for his improv with the didgeridoo. Our neighbours, the OMEIO crew, who kept everyone well fed with an array of delicious deli bites.
Special thanks to all the artists that featured in the group show and to Anallisa Ferraris for her stunning Claudio Armchairs, FELLR for their delicious seltzers, and Allevare Wines for their fine, homegrown, and thoughtful red and white wines and lastly, Curly Lewis Brewing Company for their beers brewed in Bondi.
