In The art that made me, artists discuss works in the Art Gallery of NSW collection that either inspire, influence or simply delight them. This selection by Sydney artist Alice Couttoupes first appeared in Look – the Gallery’s members magazine.
Recently returned from her Paris residency as the recipient of the 2018 Eva Breuer Travelling Art Scholarship, Sydney artist Alice Couttoupes’ exquisitely detailed, delicate porcelain sculptures capture botanical histories of display and control, while rendering the fragility of our current ecological balance in fine bisque.
Couttoupes’ time in Paris proved formative. Beyond ‘watching Notre Dame burn up in flames’ and ‘finding the best, true croissant left in Paris’ (according to her French teacher), Couttoupes notes that ‘during the residency the scope of my research ballooned and directed me to look more broadly at the concept of a garden. I became interested in investigating gardens as in-between spaces, both public and private, and how those boundaries unfortunately often define our responsibility to the environment.’ Our human relationships with the natural world also thread throughout the Art Gallery of NSW collection works that have shaped her.
In memory of art dealer Eva Breuer, each year the Eva Breuer Travelling Art Scholarship is awarded by the Breuer Foundation, in collaboration with the Gallery, to a young Australian female artist for the purpose of travel and study at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.