Latest news with #GullottiGalleries
Perth Now
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Cottesloe welcomes out-of-this-world spacemen art exhibition
Coming Out (Blue) Spaceman, artist Brendan Murphy and owner of Gullotti Galleries Paul Gullotti and Sitting Spaceman (Pink). Picture: John Koh Contemporary artist Brendan Murphy opened his blockbuster Australian exhibition debut in Cottesloe on Thursday, hours after unveiling a 7m spaceman sculpture he donated to Perth. The sculptor, painter and digital artist, who works from his Miami-based studio, launched his Life is Electric showcase at Gullotti Galleries, which is on display until July 10. The exhibition features 45 works ranging from vibrant graffiti-style paintings to carbon fibre sculptures of all sizes, including his renowned Boonji Spacemen, which represents embracing the unknown and the human desire to venture beyond. The opening comes after a custom-built Boonji Spaceman, titled Lightning, landed in Stirling Gardens outside Council House, where it will remain for the next year. SEE THE SOCIALS GALLERY BELOW Owner of Gullotti Galleries, Paul Gullotti, was overcome with emotion when talking about the moment he had secured a spaceman for Perth and a debut Murphy exhibition with help from former Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas. 'I just want to say something from personally from my heart about that moment,' he said during a speech. 'I've been in this business for 30 years now, what I've looked at today and what I've seen, I think I have to pinch myself, watching the smiles, seeing all of these people here, my phone hasn't stopped ringing. 'We need this kind of art here.' The new Boonji Spaceman artwork at Stirling Gardens. Credit: Riley Churchman / The West Australian However, the history-making landing of the spaceman has caused quite a controversy after it replaced the Ore Obelisk or The Kebab, which had been in place since the 1970s but was removed and put in storage in 2021. But it seems some people are warming to the idea of having the incredible piece after lining up to capture selfies to share on Instagram. Murphy said after making contact with Mr Gullotti and Mr Zempilas, he was hooked on gifting a sculpture to Perth. '(Mr Zempilas) sold me on Perth and his passion for the city and the city as a place that's looking to the future and there's a history of connection to space, so it was kind of a no-brainer,' he said. 'And that started a journey which, if I knew what it would have entailed, probably would not have taken that journey. But now that I'm here, everyone's been very nice and the city's gorgeous.' Murphy's spacemen can be seen in Knightsbridge, London and Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros baseball team in Texas. Murphy's art has been collected by celebrities including Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Ryan Gosling and Warren Buffett. Nadal's sculpture is a 2m tennis player called Vamos, which stands at the sporting legend's tennis academy in Mallorca. Murphy has also created a $25m diamond-encrusted statue for Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. He has held multiple exhibitions in the USA, Canada and Europe.
Sydney Morning Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
When Basil met Boonji: It was love at first sight, but not everyone is starstruck
When American artist Brendan Murphy offered to give the City of Perth a seven-metre sculpture of an astronaut, Basil Zempilas embraced it with characteristic enthusiasm. The former lord mayor saw the freebie as a cool, Instagrammable piece of public art that aligned perfectly with the recently elected council's rebrand of Perth as the City of Light, a reference to John Glenn's 1962 triple-orbit of Earth in which our young metropolis put on a glittering show for the future senator. Zempilas was so entranced by an artist collected by the likes of Serena Williams, Ryan Gosling and Warren Buffett gifting a piece valued at $1.5 million to the City of Perth — albeit a gift that would cost ratepayers about $250,000 for transportation and installation — that he became part of the creative process, feeding the Florida-based Murphy information on the city he grew up in. Fragments of the story Zempilas told Murphy can be seen in the text on the skin of our Boonji Spaceman (including the story of Glenn's famous flight), which was eventually placed in Stirling Gardens and unveiled on Thursday in front of a large media pack. Zempilas is so invested in the Boonji Spaceman (titled Lightening) that he took time out from his duties as the Liberal leader to attend the unveiling and to catch up with Murphy and Gullotti Galleries owner Paul Gullotti, who set up the deal and who is holding the artist's first Australian solo show (Zempilas also hosted the opening of the exhibit). 'Basil was the one who sold me on doing the project,' says Murphy in the lead-up to the unveiling of the Boonji Spaceman. 'He was so fired up about Perth and had this incredible energy. Here was the mayor of a major city who was genuinely interested in my work and wanted to bring it here. Loading 'I received a long email from Basil full of history and dates, including the story of John Glenn's flight. 'So this Boonji Spaceman is not a generic piece built on the other side of the world and shipped here. It's been created specifically for Perth and with input from someone who truly loves the place.' Zempilas said he told Murphy that Perth was 'very proud, it's adventurous, it's ambitious'. 'I note that he has adopted some of those,' Zempilas says. While Zempilas and Murphy were all smiles at the media launch, they spent much of their time answering questions about controversy swirling around the Boonji Spaceman, which has been sucked into more general criticism of the City of Perth's cavalier treatment of the public art works in its collection. Art activists believe that the city should not have paid a quarter of a million dollars for a work they claim has no merit and genuine connection to Perth. Even more galling for those pushing back against the Boonji Spaceman is that Murphy's piece has been placed on the plinth on which for half a century stood Ore Obelisk, Paul Ritter's monument to the mining industry which, critics argue, was not properly maintained and chopped up and removed without proper consultation. Now looming over the cherished Austaliana spread around Stirling Gardens — Joan Walsh-Smith and Charles Smith's kangaroos and Mae Gibbs' Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, statues of founding fathers and key historic buildings — is a hulking electric-blue space traveller whose clones grace public and private spaces in cities such as New York, London, Oslo and Riyadh. Prominent art critic John McDonald labelled the work as 'space junk' and compared the councillors who voted for Murphy's piece to be placed near Council House as 'a bit like Donald Trump deciding that the Kennedy Centre needs to ditch all that elitist crap and put on a great production of Cats or Fiddler on the Roof '. 'The arts are there to start discussions, to bring people into the room. It is what I hope the Boonji Spaceman will do.' Brendan Murphy 'It is not the role of the mayor to make decisions on art acquisitions for the City,' says Helen Curtis, a public art consultant who is leading the campaign to save both the Ore Obelisk and the Northbridge Arch, which were removed because of corrosion. 'The mayor's job is to promote the city and be a statesman. It is not making calls on works of art,' Curtis says. 'They can put something forward, like any elected member. But it must go through a proper process. 'Committees and advisory groups are a filter and safety net to ensure that the city does not find itself in this exact situation — paying an exorbitant amount of money for work whose connection to Perth is dubious and is so poorly regarded by the arts community.' Curtis believes that Zempilas managed to sway councillors and circumvent the normal procedures because he was an unusually high-profile and charismatic mayor, a well-connected media personality who during his single term brought a huge amount of attention to the city. She also believes the Boonji Spaceman represents a larger problem for the city and for Western Australia, in which the arts have been 'dumbed down' and subsumed by the grander project of branding, marketing and tourism. 'The Boonji Spaceman is a marketing stunt dressed up as art — and not a very good marketing stunt at that,' Curtis says. 'If the city wants to use art to draw tourists we need work that springs for here. Nobody is going to travel to Perth to see Ikea art that has popped up in Dubai or Miami or wherever. 'If the City wants something Instagrammable, we can do that here with authenticity. But fix the important works we already have first — that's what should be prioritised.' Murphy said he was unaware of the controversy swirling around his work until a couple of weeks ago. 'Not everyone's going to like it. But trying to stop it from being shown is shutting down discussion.' Brendan Murphy Since arriving this week, he's fielded questions from journalists about the appropriateness of a piece of American pop art sitting in a civic space, and a large piece of ratepayers money going to what is could be construed as an advertisement for a show. 'Whatever opposition there is to my Boonji Spaceman it has nothing to do with me. And it can't have anything to do with Basil because his motives are genuine,' says Murphy, a former professional basketball player and Wall Street trader who pivoted to art after watching many of his colleagues die on September 11. While Murphy has sympathy for the position of Curtis and the Save the Kebab movement — 'I stand by all artists,' he says — the Rhode Island-born sculptor and painter who counts Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michael Basquiat and Willem de Kooning among his influence does not want to be drawn into what he regards as a political dispute. 'Politics has no place in art. The job of the artist is to bring people together,' he says. 'I'm not interested in what divides us. I'm interested in our commonalities. I'm an artist. I'm not an American artist. All I care about is inspiring some young kid who dreams of one day being an artist.' Indeed, Murphy believes in remaining neutral even though he has recently had a show in the Kennedy Centre, which became a flashpoint for the resistance against Trump when he fired 17 board members and made himself the chair. 'When Trump said something stupid, as he always does, a group of singers pushed back and did not invite him to a show, which is why he got so angry and took over the place,' Murphy says. 'It was not their role. They should have sung for him and made their point. It's what Bob Dylan would have done. 'The arts are there to start discussions, to bring people into the room. It is what I hope the Boonji Spaceman will do. 'Not everyone's going to like it. But trying to stop it from being shown is shutting down discussion.' While the city says the Boonji Spaceman will be moved to Elizabeth Quay after 12 months, Curtis and her colleagues, who are fighting for the Kebab to be returned to the spot where Murphy's work now stands, remain convinced that Murphy's sculpture is here to stay. 'Our great fear is that in a year the city will announce that it is too costly to move the Boonji Spaceman and that it will be left there,' she says.
The Age
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
When Basil met Boonji: It was love at first sight, but not everyone is starstruck
When American artist Brendan Murphy offered to give the City of Perth a seven-metre sculpture of an astronaut, Basil Zempilas embraced it with characteristic enthusiasm. The former lord mayor saw the freebie as a cool, Instagrammable piece of public art that aligned perfectly with the recently elected council's rebrand of Perth as the City of Light, a reference to John Glenn's 1962 triple-orbit of Earth in which our young metropolis put on a glittering show for the future senator. Zempilas was so entranced by an artist collected by the likes of Serena Williams, Ryan Gosling and Warren Buffett gifting a piece valued at $1.5 million to the City of Perth — albeit a gift that would cost ratepayers about $250,000 for transportation and installation — that he became part of the creative process, feeding the Florida-based Murphy information on the city he grew up in. Fragments of the story Zempilas told Murphy can be seen in the text on the skin of our Boonji Spaceman (including the story of Glenn's famous flight), which was eventually placed in Stirling Gardens and unveiled on Thursday in front of a large media pack. Zempilas is so invested in the Boonji Spaceman (titled Lightening) that he took time out from his duties as the Liberal leader to attend the unveiling and to catch up with Murphy and Gullotti Galleries owner Paul Gullotti, who set up the deal and who is holding the artist's first Australian solo show (Zempilas also hosted the opening of the exhibit). 'Basil was the one who sold me on doing the project,' says Murphy in the lead-up to the unveiling of the Boonji Spaceman. 'He was so fired up about Perth and had this incredible energy. Here was the mayor of a major city who was genuinely interested in my work and wanted to bring it here. Loading 'I received a long email from Basil full of history and dates, including the story of John Glenn's flight. 'So this Boonji Spaceman is not a generic piece built on the other side of the world and shipped here. It's been created specifically for Perth and with input from someone who truly loves the place.' Zempilas said he told Murphy that Perth was 'very proud, it's adventurous, it's ambitious'. 'I note that he has adopted some of those,' Zempilas says. While Zempilas and Murphy were all smiles at the media launch, they spent much of their time answering questions about controversy swirling around the Boonji Spaceman, which has been sucked into more general criticism of the City of Perth's cavalier treatment of the public art works in its collection. Art activists believe that the city should not have paid a quarter of a million dollars for a work they claim has no merit and genuine connection to Perth. Even more galling for those pushing back against the Boonji Spaceman is that Murphy's piece has been placed on the plinth on which for half a century stood Ore Obelisk, Paul Ritter's monument to the mining industry which, critics argue, was not properly maintained and chopped up and removed without proper consultation. Now looming over the cherished Austaliana spread around Stirling Gardens — Joan Walsh-Smith and Charles Smith's kangaroos and Mae Gibbs' Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, statues of founding fathers and key historic buildings — is a hulking electric-blue space traveller whose clones grace public and private spaces in cities such as New York, London, Oslo and Riyadh. Prominent art critic John McDonald labelled the work as 'space junk' and compared the councillors who voted for Murphy's piece to be placed near Council House as 'a bit like Donald Trump deciding that the Kennedy Centre needs to ditch all that elitist crap and put on a great production of Cats or Fiddler on the Roof '. 'The arts are there to start discussions, to bring people into the room. It is what I hope the Boonji Spaceman will do.' Brendan Murphy 'It is not the role of the mayor to make decisions on art acquisitions for the City,' says Helen Curtis, a public art consultant who is leading the campaign to save both the Ore Obelisk and the Northbridge Arch, which were removed because of corrosion. 'The mayor's job is to promote the city and be a statesman. It is not making calls on works of art,' Curtis says. 'They can put something forward, like any elected member. But it must go through a proper process. 'Committees and advisory groups are a filter and safety net to ensure that the city does not find itself in this exact situation — paying an exorbitant amount of money for work whose connection to Perth is dubious and is so poorly regarded by the arts community.' Curtis believes that Zempilas managed to sway councillors and circumvent the normal procedures because he was an unusually high-profile and charismatic mayor, a well-connected media personality who during his single term brought a huge amount of attention to the city. She also believes the Boonji Spaceman represents a larger problem for the city and for Western Australia, in which the arts have been 'dumbed down' and subsumed by the grander project of branding, marketing and tourism. 'The Boonji Spaceman is a marketing stunt dressed up as art — and not a very good marketing stunt at that,' Curtis says. 'If the city wants to use art to draw tourists we need work that springs for here. Nobody is going to travel to Perth to see Ikea art that has popped up in Dubai or Miami or wherever. 'If the City wants something Instagrammable, we can do that here with authenticity. But fix the important works we already have first — that's what should be prioritised.' Murphy said he was unaware of the controversy swirling around his work until a couple of weeks ago. 'Not everyone's going to like it. But trying to stop it from being shown is shutting down discussion.' Brendan Murphy Since arriving this week, he's fielded questions from journalists about the appropriateness of a piece of American pop art sitting in a civic space, and a large piece of ratepayers money going to what is could be construed as an advertisement for a show. 'Whatever opposition there is to my Boonji Spaceman it has nothing to do with me. And it can't have anything to do with Basil because his motives are genuine,' says Murphy, a former professional basketball player and Wall Street trader who pivoted to art after watching many of his colleagues die on September 11. While Murphy has sympathy for the position of Curtis and the Save the Kebab movement — 'I stand by all artists,' he says — the Rhode Island-born sculptor and painter who counts Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michael Basquiat and Willem de Kooning among his influence does not want to be drawn into what he regards as a political dispute. 'Politics has no place in art. The job of the artist is to bring people together,' he says. 'I'm not interested in what divides us. I'm interested in our commonalities. I'm an artist. I'm not an American artist. All I care about is inspiring some young kid who dreams of one day being an artist.' Indeed, Murphy believes in remaining neutral even though he has recently had a show in the Kennedy Centre, which became a flashpoint for the resistance against Trump when he fired 17 board members and made himself the chair. 'When Trump said something stupid, as he always does, a group of singers pushed back and did not invite him to a show, which is why he got so angry and took over the place,' Murphy says. 'It was not their role. They should have sung for him and made their point. It's what Bob Dylan would have done. 'The arts are there to start discussions, to bring people into the room. It is what I hope the Boonji Spaceman will do. 'Not everyone's going to like it. But trying to stop it from being shown is shutting down discussion.' While the city says the Boonji Spaceman will be moved to Elizabeth Quay after 12 months, Curtis and her colleagues, who are fighting for the Kebab to be returned to the spot where Murphy's work now stands, remain convinced that Murphy's sculpture is here to stay. 'Our great fear is that in a year the city will announce that it is too costly to move the Boonji Spaceman and that it will be left there,' she says.
Perth Now
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Perth joins only six other cities to get their own spaceman
A 7-metre tall graffiti-covered spaceman has touched down in Perth and is being prepared for installation out the front of the City of Perth's Council House. Perth will join only six other cities across the globe to have their very own personalised BOONJI Spaceman, which was made exclusively for the city by contemporary artist Brendan Murphy. 'BOONJI Spaceman sculptures are each uniquely crafted to reflect their setting, and the Perth installation is no exception — this work stands alone in its design and intent, created to inspire wonder, spark imagination, and enrich the cultural fabric of the city with a symbol of limitless potential,' Murphy said. Your local paper, whenever you want it. He has donated the statue to the city, which has budgeted $250,000 for its transportation and installation. Brendan Murphy standing next to another one of his Spaceman sculptures. Credit: Jaramay Aref Photography The installation comes just in time for Murphy's 'blockbuster' Australian solo exhibition set to hit Perth at the end of May. The 'larger than life' sculpture titled Lightening will be unveiled to the public in May just ahead of the exhibition's opening. The exhibition will be held at Gullotti Galleries in Cottesloe and will showcase more than 45 artworks including sculptures and paintings, with Murphy travelling to Perth from his studio in Florida to add finishing touches and to meet art lovers. The Life Is Electric exhibition will feature a range of large sculptures, including A Step Forward, The Sitting Spaceman, The Thinking Spaceman, The Dancing Spaceman and Loolee Bear. One of Murphy's collectables - Loolee Bear. Credit: Devahasdin Gullotti Galleries founder and director Paul Gullotti said BOONJI was a gift for all West Australians. 'Once it is unveiled it belongs to the people. This incredible sculpture has been custom-made for Perth and truly reflects my passion to provide West Australians access to inspiring and talented global artists and I hope it ignites artistic passion in people of all ages,' he said. 'I can't wait to welcome Brendan here as I have done with other talented and inspirational global artists like Mr Brainwash, Russel Young, Robert Mars and David Uessum. 'It will give the people of Perth a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet the artist and his accompanying Life Is Electric exhibition offers people the chance to secure a piece of something that is entrenched in Perth's history.' The BOONJI Spaceman will be at the Stirling Gardens for 12 months before moving to its forever home, which is still yet to be confirmed by the City of Perth. Murphy's art can be found in museums and galleries across the world, with notable collectors being Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Larry Page, Warren Buffett, Ryan Gosling and Grant Cardone. The Spaceman will be replacing 'Ore Obelisk', was also known as the 'Kebab', which stood out the front of Council House for almost 50 years but was removed in 2021 due to safety reasons, which caused significant outcries from residents. The removal of Ore Obelisk in 2021. Credit: City of Perth A peaceful protest picnic calling on the City of Perth to reinstate the Ore Obelisk and 'protect art legacy' is planned at the Stirling Gardens between from 11am to 1pm on Friday, May 9. Life is Electric will be open to the public for eight weeks from May 23.
