Inside contemporary art collectors’ Adelaide home
North Adelaide couple Stephanie and Julian Grose are among 26 Australian art collectors who invite readers into their homes in a new book that offers a visual feast for art lovers.
“It’s an exciting moment when you find a connection with an artwork that you love and you bring it home and you get to live with it,” says arts advisor, advocate and writer Kym Elphinstone. “It’s genuine joy.”
Kym’s own first acquisition was a weighty bronze sculpture of an anamorphically distorted skull by Australian artist Louis Pratt that she attempted to carry home herself because she didn’t want to let it out of her sight. The sculpture has moved with her across various homes and, as she writes in the introduction to her new book Collecting: Living With Art, “it continues to patina with age, as I do”.
“I still have it with me in my living room today,” she tells SALIFE. “It’s incredibly heavy. And it’s a real conversation-starter, because depending on which angle you look at it from, you can’t tell what it is.”
The main painting in the living room is by Brent Harris, framed by statues by Francis Upritchard.
The Sydney-based founder and CEO of cultural communications agency Articulate, Kym’s personal art collection has now grown to around 40 artworks, and over two decades working in the arts she has also been fortunate to see first-hand the personal collections of many other art lovers. With Collecting, a hardcover book full of striking imagery by photographer Dave Wheeler, she takes readers into the homes of 26 diverse collectors across Australia.
“In essence, it’s designed to be a visual feast … the purpose of the book is to provide 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. And also to provide some practical tips and advice along the way, so essentially it is about what I’m passionate about, which is increasing audiences for the visual arts.”
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The book took around a year to compile as Kym travelled across the country to interview the participants, who are as varied as their artworks. They include the likes of architect Penelope Seidler (whose modernist home in Sydney displays a number of large paintings that have remained in place since it was designed in 1967 by Penelope and her late husband, fellow architect Harry Seidler), and Indigenous artist and curator Tony Albert, a former winner of the Fleurieu Art Prize whose Brisbane weatherboard home and studio houses a vast assortment of “Aboriginalia” alongside numerous works by celebrated contemporary Australian artists such as Vincent Namatjira.
Kym says many of the featured collectors spoke about the deep personal connection they felt with certain pieces or artists.
“It’s not something that they’ve bought because they thought it would look good above the couch… they’ve bought works that mean something to them, that mean something to their families, that have a special connection to them, and that they would take with them from house to house moving forward.”
That is certainly the case with Stephanie and Julian Grose, who designed and built their North Adelaide home with art in mind. The couple has more than 300 works by more than 195 artists, including a Brett Whiteley lithograph that was their first art purchase (bought at a charity auction in 1989), 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.
Stephanie is a long-time supporter of the Art Gallery of South Australia and former chair of its Adelaide Biennial Ambassadors committee, and Kym says the couple’s collection reflects their support for local artists. Among SA artist friends whom the Groses have commissioned to create works for their home are the late Hossein Valamanesh, who made their bronze branch front door handle, and Nicholas Folland, who created a large installation of found crystal pieces that is suspended by fishing wire in the living room.
In Collecting, Stephanie explains that when it came time for the painstaking installation of Nicholas’s work, she was too anxious to be at home, so left the artist with the house keys while she and Julian went overseas: “He did the most remarkable job – I just love it. He also made us a special vacuum so we can dust it, which shows the lengths these wonderful people go to in working towards perfection!”
Kym adds: “Every work seems to have a story behind it, but also a story behind their relationship with the artist.
“There was often a photo of them with the artist overseas on some sort of art expedition or trip. It showed how strong those relationships were.”
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A salon hang around the staircase includes works by Khadim Ali, Fiona Connor and Mike Parr.
Her own favourite hang within the Groses’ extensive collection creates a dramatic backdrop behind the dining room table. It features a Shaun Gladwell photograph of a figure standing on a car driving along a red dirt road in the outback (from his 2009 video work Interceptor Surf Sequence) flanked by two large works by Brook Andrew and David Noonan.
“As you walk into their house, that wall grabs you instantly with those three large-scale, very powerful works by senior Australian artists,” Kym says.
The Groses even have a salon hang in their garage, as does another featured collector: philanthropy manager Naomi Tosic. Naomi’s family home in a five-level renovated hat factory in Sydney’s Paddington features myriad pieces that trace the course of her relationship with her husband, designer and master craftsman Boris Tosic, who died of motor neurone disease in 2022. As Naomi showed the collection to Kym, she explained the significance of each piece – from a painting of a traditional women’s birthing ground by Indigenous artist Ningura Napurrula that Boris bought when she was expecting their first son, to a Bill Henson photograph she gave him as a housewarming gift.
The stunning salon hang in the garage includes works by Mike Parr, Peter Liversidge, Fiona Hall and Selina Ou.
“It’s incredibly heart rending, and I think that shows how the art in their home, every single piece, tells a story about their personal relationship and their lives.”
Kym credits her high school arts teacher with igniting her own love of the arts, describing her collection as an “ever-evolving reflection of my interests”. She has a particular fondness for abstract and figurative painting, and sculpture, especially work by emerging Australian contemporary artists.
“I really believe in supporting artists at the start of their careers because that’s when they need the most help to be able to continue and to grow. And through my work I am lucky enough to be exposed to a lot of emerging artists.”
A floor sculpture by Ben Armstrong is flanked by works by Fiona Banner, left, and a tapestry by Renee So, right.
A salon hang in the study includes works by David Shrigley, Tracey Moffatt, John Campbell, Jackson Slattery and Susan Hipgrave, has filled the space with colour and inspiration.
She drew on her connections in the art world when selecting the collectors featured in Collecting: Living With Art, noting that they range from younger collectors to octogenarians, and come from a mixture of backgrounds.
“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.”
This article first appeared in the April 2025 issue of SALIFE magazine.
