GOOD THING

From the collection of Karina Harris + Neil Hobbs

7 September - 6 October 2007

In the non-commercial environment of contemporary art spaces it is easy to forget that artists, like people in any other profession, need to make a living. The work shown in publicly funded galleries like Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) is often ephemeral and frequently unsaleable. While art spaces like CCAS often seem to have a prickly relationship with dealers, that results from a kind of “public sector/private sector” competition, both have important and distinctive roles to play in maintaining viable careers for artists and generating an energetic cultural environment that will facilitate the sale of work and enhance the quality of life.

The distance between public funded galleries and collectors is evident in the origins of Good Thing, which has almost ‘mythological’ beginnings. Making a delivery to the home of Karina Harris and Neil Hobbs one afternoon, CCAS program manager Toni Bailey literally stumbled across a significant collection. Looking at the Harris Hobbs collection for the first time in its ‘natural home environment’ one is overwhelmed both by a sense of obsession and excess. To say that every square inch of space in their home dominated by art is a modest exaggeration and works of every shape, size, colour and medium occupy bedrooms, bathrooms, lounge, dinning room and kitchen.

Toni Bailey and David Broker have selected a number of works that represent some of the more adventurous works Harris and Hobbs have collected. Good Thing displays works by known artists that may not have seen before and as such there are a number of surprises. These are the works that artists sell to private collectors and are often the works that we, the general populace, will rarely see. In the original context of the collection, however, each piece is part of an environment Harris and Hobbs have created with art work, a highly refined sense of design, space and light that might serve as a metaphor for the role that art and culture can play in society at large. (David Broker, 2007)

Image: The Harris Hobbs Collection, Good Things, 2007.