In The art that made me, artists discuss works in the Art Gallery of NSW collection that either inspire, influence or simply delight them. This selection by Anne Ferran first appeared in Look – the Gallery’s members magazine.

As a photographer, Anne Ferran is as interested in what sits just outside the frame as what is within – things that remain invisible and stories
that, historically, went untold – or what the AGNSW collection handbook describes as seeking to ‘image the unknowable’. That same enigmatic quality is reflected in the works that resonate with her from the collection.

Simone Mangos Salt lick

In the 1980s, before she moved to Berlin, Simone Mangos made some wonderful installations using organic materials, including large quantities of honey and a whole charred tree. One of these was included in the 1987 Perspecta, a biannual show of contemporary Australian art at the Gallery. It was her first showing at AGNSW and, coincidentally, mine as well. The installations aren’t in the collection, for fairly obvious reasons, but this sculptural work is. Its materials are iron and salt – everyday on one level and symbolic – perhaps allegorical is better – on another. Even more than the materials themselves, I love the way the work is slowly destroying itself, the salt attacking the iron spikes, the chemical reaction discolouring and deforming the salt. It cheered me then, as it does now, to find a major institution collecting a work that’s deliberately made not to last.

Peter Peryer Thea’s Hand

I happened to be in Christchurch the day Peter Peryer went to the house of Thea and her parents to take this photo, and he asked me to go with him. I’d seen Peter take photos before and I knew that it could happen quite quickly, since the taking usually came after a great deal of preparation. On this day I expected to be an observer, but as soon as his large hand and Thea’s smaller one were in place on the table, he passed the camera to me and – under his direction – I took the photo. It was quickly done: I shot only two or three frames and didn’t think much more about it. Not long after Peter’s death last year, I was surprised but glad to come across the photo again, here in the collection.

Carlene West Tjitjiti

I’m not a painter, but when an artwork makes me want to run to the studio and start work immediately, it is usually a painting, and very often the trigger is something sensual in the handling of the paint. This painting by Carlene West, with its expanses of creamy whites, does that for me. It is a visually bold and stunning work, and the reaction I have to it is almost a physical yearning. It could be because the shapes of the salt-lake and sandhills are like fleshy bodies, but it’s more likely to be something that I can’t put a finger on. Given the chance to own any contemporary work, from anywhere, chances are I’d pick this one.

Peter Kennedy Seven people who died the
day I was born – April 18, 1945 (part 1)

I’m so glad that AGNSW has this work. For someone with an interest in archives as strong as mine, it is a standout work. But I find it a really hard work to write about, and this difficulty is infuriating. It should be easy: seven framed photographs, drawn from a variety of archival sources; factual texts; fluorescent lights; a semi-repetitive, serial structure. But by mixing biography into history and politics (or the reverse, I’m not sure which it is), Kennedy has made them all unstable. Every attempt I make to tease them out in words immediately collapses. On the upside, trying to pin this work down has given me a better understanding of the quirks in the archives I work with, and has done nothing to lessen my admiration for it.