My Favourite Things: Rose Vickers
Rose Vickers, director at Nathalie Karg Gallery, discusses the art she owns and why.
Rose Vickers travels across broad territory within the art world, with a career spanning cultures and hemispheres. After starting out as a researcher for Bondi’s Cooee Gallery, she moved from Sydney to New York to helm Donald Ellis Gallery in 2017, and as of this year, she is director at Nathalie Karg Gallery.
Her global art explorations span a PhD on Robert Smithson, research placements in France, Indonesia, and Mexico, and a recent focus on technology as curatorial director for the Arthur art app. Her travelling eye is always roving, seeking out new talent in far-flung places. Here she shares her personal art collection and the stories behind it.
André Hemer, An Image Cast by the Sun #10, 2019
A few years ago, I spent time on Long Island with the New Zealand painter André Hemer. Soon after, Hemer asked me to write something for his exhibition Images Cast by the Sun, which ran alongside that year’s Singapore Biennale. The resulting essay was published by Hemer’s galleries in Singapore (Yavus Gallery) and New Zealand (Gow Langsford). Starting with large-format scans of the Vienna sky, Hemer combines these with screen print, paint, and collage. It attests to his love of the city and is a masterful observation of light. This work is the first thing I see when I wake up.
Ward Roberts, Court 9, 2010
Although we’ve been friends a long time (and moved to New York in tandem), I started working with photographer Ward Roberts quite recently, when on the lookout for artists whose work crosses physical and digital worlds. His Courts series mainly centres on the shared recreational facilities of public housing and school zones. Shot on Hong Kong’s sparsely populated island of Cheung Chau, sport stands in, here, for a universal language — an activity shared between cultures and social groups. Courts 9 is an ode to life spent outdoors with family and friends, although paradoxically, no people are present.
Alex Seton, Minor Obstacle, 2019
The conceptual sculptor Alex Seton surprised me with Minor Obstacle on a recent trip home. As a miniature Jersey barrier, the marble form is equally beautiful and challenging in its allusion to Australia’s historically fraught immigration policies. It sits atop an ever-rotating collection of books in my living room, now keeping company with the Bauhaus, a collection on Frank Stella, and Ruth Asawa.
Jack Pierson, Untitled, date unknown
This pleasingly irregular Jack Pierson was a birthday gift from Sam Trioli, of Tribeca’s fiery, petite Launch F18 gallery. It was part of a one-time print sale that Jack held at Gordon Robichaux, where the works spanned a large part of his career and diverse interests: language and image, queer identity, and a US vernacular. Having grown up on the coast, I gravitate towards artwork that reminds me of nature, and here I love the sense of leafy quietness.
This article originally appeared in Billionaire's Healing Issue, Winter 2022/23. To subscribe contact
