The artist-collector relationship has existed for millennia, manifesting in multiple forms with varying outcomes. During the Renaissance, the patronage of the Medici family enabled Raphael and Leonardo DaVinci to focus solely on art. Just outside Melbourne, during the mid twentieth century, at their home Heidi, John and Sunday Reed invited a young Sidney Nolan inside their world, creating a consummate creative union. In Sydney, Judith Nielsen has helped usher contemporary Chinese artists from emerging to legendary status. Each partnership has yielded significant outputs reverberating throughout different cultures.

5X5 recognizes the cultural significance of these types of pairings by exploring the trajectories of five artists and their parallel collector relationships:

·       Amanda Love / Tracey Emin

·        Dr. Dick Quan / Uji ‘Hahan’ Handoko Eko Saputro

·        Lisa Paulsen / Patrick Hartigan

·        James Emmett / Julian Meagher

·        The Private Collector / Nigel Milsom

The exhibition format encompasses 5 artist-collector pairings, each exhibiting works from their artist drawn from their personal collections, and newly acquired artworks. These newly acquired artworks seek to extend the reciprocity and respect inherent in these pairings. The results are five artists, five collectors, five collections and five sets of recently acquired works.