Reviewer COLIN STEELE looks at a lavish book that peeps into the homes and art collections of 26 Australian artists, curators, architects, designers, gallerists and philanthropists.

Kym Elphinstone, the founder of Australia’s leading cultural agency Articulate, has championed the work of thousands of artists and advised major museum and commercial galleries including the National Gallery of Australia, the Biennale of Sydney, the National Gallery of Victoria and Australia’s Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Elphinstone puts this expertise to good effect in a beautifully illustrated book, with Jo Higgins, Collecting: Living with Art  (Thames & Hudson, $79.99), replete with striking full-page colour photographs by Dave Wheeler.

Elphinstone takes the reader into the homes and collections of 26 Australian artists, curators, architects, designers, gallerists and philanthropists, noting: “I’ve been lucky enough to have been invited into some extraordinary homes and art collections over the years… What strikes me each time is how diverse they are, and the extent to which they reflect the personality of the collector”.

Elphinstone has said the inspiration for her book was to unite her “trio of passions: books, art and design, particularly interior design”.

“It was seeded when I read a book about bibliophiles that profiled people’s collections of books, antique and otherwise, and it captivated me.,” she says.

“I was fascinated. It had some beautiful, interesting imagery and was written in a heartfelt manner. And I thought, why has this not been done for the arts… And I was really conscious of trying not to replicate too many styles of collecting, so what you see in the book is, from page to page and from profile to profile, a really diverse approach to the type of art they collect, the type of home and their architecture, and the scale of it as well.

“I’m hoping to show people that you don’t have to be a millionaire to start your art collection. You can start at any point, and there are many ways to go about it”.

The featured 26 range from younger collectors to octogenarians from a variety of backgrounds. Elphinstone “aimed for a mixed group of vocations. I wanted some people from finance and law and different sectors to show what’s possible from their perspective”.

She takes the reader  into the impressive Southern Highlands home of Andrew Martin, head of asset management at MA Financial Group, with an art collection including Aboriginal paintings stone and steel sculptures and large paintings by Dale Frank and Yaritji Young.

Architect Penelope Seidler’s modernist home in Sydney, designed in 1967 by Penelope and her late husband (fellow architect Harry Seidler), contains works by Pablo Picasso, Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler and Emily Kam Kngwarray, some hanging in the same spaces as when originally hung in 1967.

Indigenous artist and curator Tony Albert’s Brisbane weatherboard home and studio houses a vast assortment of “Aboriginalia” , described as “kitsch objects and images that feature portrayals of Aboriginal people and cultural materials”, which Albert began collecting as a child. These sit alongside numerous works by leading Aboriginal artists, such as Daniel Boyd, Vincent Namatjira and Julie Rrap. Albert  told Elphinstone: “I don’t think there’s any work in my collection from an artist I don’t actually know”.

Sydney-based curator Micheal Do’s home, with partner Tony Claridge, in Sydney’s Surry Hills, contains works by Jeff Koons, Ronnie van Hout, Simon Yates, Fiona Connor and an eight-metre long wall painting by Turner prize-winning artist Martin Creed.

Stephanie and Julian Grose, who designed and built their North Adelaide home with art in mind, contains more than 300 works by more than 195 artists, including a Brett Whiteley lithograph that was their first art purchase, furniture and lamps by the late South Australian designer and craftsman Khai Liew, ghost sculptures by Sydney-based multidisciplinary artist Nell, and an imposing life-size fibreglass and nail sentinel by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn.

These collector examples highlight Elphinstone’s wish that her book, “designed to be a visual feast”, provides “inspiration for everyone that they can be an art collector and to show a really diverse array of approaches to collecting and to living with art in your home … So essentially it is about what I’m passionate about, which is increasing audiences for the visual arts.”

In that aim, Elphinstone has succeeded superbly.