Kaldor Family Collection: Artist Room #2 - Francis Alÿs and Bill Viola

For more than 50 years, John Kaldor has been Australia’s most passionate collector of international contemporary art, developing lasting relationships with some of the most important artists of our time. Recently gifted to the Art Gallery of NSW, the John Kaldor Family Collection comprises over 200 works including artists Francis Alÿs and Bill Viola.

Francis Alÿs’s video works engage with the interdisciplinary space of art, architecture and social practice. Walking is at the core of his practice with works conceived on long walks through cities, particularly Mexico City, where he lives.

Bill Viola is celebrated as one of the world’s leading video artists. His video works and audiovisual installations explore fundamental aspects of the human experience. In his unique body of work Six Heads, a single individual is the subject of study. Nevertheless, a sense of dialogue seems to develop between the figure’s various expressions in the adjacent images.

Image: Bill Viola (United States of America, b.1951), Six heads (detail) 2000, video, 16:9 ratio, colour, silent, 20 min; Art Gallery of New South Wales. Gift of the John Kaldor Family Collection 2011. Photo: AGNSW, copyright Bill Viola 251.2011.