Artbank Staff Profile: Guy Louden

Name: Guy Louden

Job Title: Art Consultant & Collections Officer

What year did you join the Artbank team: 2024

Describe your role and what you enjoy about working for Artbank:
At Artbank I manage the leasing of the collection to WA clients, as well as a bit of registration, curatorial, and admin work. I’m the only Artbank worker based in WA, and part of my role is looking at how we can expand our presence here in the future.

It’s a privilege to work with Artbank, because it plays a crucial role in supporting and stimulating contemporary art in Australia. It makes important early-career acquisitions, and has been collecting excellent First Nations work for over 40 years.

Select an Artwork: Neville Niypula McArthur, Lake Baker, 2016

Short explanation of your artwork selection:
I feel nostalgic about this painting, because I met the artist around the time it was painted. When I met Mr McArthur, I was working for Warakurna Artists, an art centre based in a small desert community on Ngaanyatjarra lands in far east WA, near the border with NT and SA.

I worked at Warakurna only briefly, but it was a great place, on a sandy scrubby desert plain at the edge of a mountain range. One night a huge lighting storm passed low over the town, leaving in the desert a nearly perfect circle of hail stones – a thick layer of white ice on the red sand. Another day, Russell Crowe visited the art centre, arriving not by road but by private jet. He gave everyone Rabbitohs hats (though it’s a strictly AFL town).

Mr McArthur painted for Warakurna but was based at the time in an aged care facility in Wanarn, a couple of hours away. We took the Landcruiser out there, packed with canvas and paint, biscuits and tea. That day Mr McArthur worked on something quite like this, a painting in the Western Desert style showing his Country and its Tjukurrpa. In his earlier life he had been a great stockman, and as he painted he would gesture outwards from his place in the aged care centre to the surrounding desert.