Sophie Vander, founder of Sydney gallery and art consultancy Curatorial+Co, makes it very clear that she never intended to be an artist. Growing up in homes filled with the antiques and artefacts her grandmother and mother collected, she had realised early on that each work of art had a story—and that was always the part that excited her. “I don’t think I was ever passionate enough to be making art 24/7 as my artists do,” she admits. “They have to absolutely pour themselves into it; it’s all they can do. Whereas for me, it’s about having the privilege of telling their story and connecting them with collectors, and letting them go on that journey together.”
In conversation with Boulevard, Vander recalls establishing Curatorial+Co as an online gallery in 2015 as a “logistical decision” made while raising four children. Online galleries were just emerging, and curated options in Australia were scarce. She kept her roster deliberately small, intending to spark more genuine connections between artists and collectors. It wasn’t until the Sydney Contemporary in 2019—the gallery’s first fair, and where it presented an immersive live painting installation by Antonia Mrljak over five days—that she realised the value of a bricks-and-mortar space, where people could see the art in person and meet the artists too.
Left: Sophie Vander. Right: A piece from ‘Botanica Exotica: Strange Garden’ by Eugenie Kawabata, from reclaimed textiles, resin, dyes, acrylic paint, gold foil composite, and acrylic beading. Top: The ‘Desire Lines’ exhibition by Jasmine Mowbray at Curatorial+Co. (Photos courtesy of Curatorial+Co)
“For me, it’s a lot about relationships and fostering those relationships. That hasn’t changed, except our artist profiles have,” she comments on the gallery’s journey and raison d’être. “When I first started, the gallery was also about connecting the emerging collector with the emerging artist, and watching them grow together.” She’s watched those artists become more established names through the years, growing alongside them.
Curatorial+Co has since expanded from its first physical outpost in Redfern back in 2020 to a 300-square-metre space in Woolloomooloo. Vander still loves “finding that gem of an emerging artist” and, during our conversation, raves about the recent showings of Jasmine Mowbray, a “bright new talent” fresh out of the National Art School, and Tiarna Herczeg, an Aboriginal-Hungarian artist. She also speaks animatedly about Art SG in January, where they’ll be taking Australian artists of Asian heritage, including Aboriginal-Chinese artist Damien Shen, Australian-Indian artist Kate Banazi, and Australian-Thai photographic artist Lilli Waters.
“I love showing the world Australian artists, because we’re so far away from everything, and I think Australians can feel like we’re stuck on this great big island,” she says. “But we have so much good work to show the world, and for me, it’s about expanding those opportunities for the artists.”
“Good art doesn’t have to be beautiful”
It is perhaps the pursuit of opportunity that organically gave way to Curatorial+Co’s consultancy arm. “I realised that I had a lot of architects and designers coming to me for works for their projects,” Vander recalls, “and it became this really important extension of the gallery, because it allowed our artists to place their work outside the gallery walls.” They’ve since serviced hotels, commercial spaces, and workplaces all over the region. Vander muses about art’s psychological effect—“beautiful collections and interactive artworks can change your brain in a way”—and what the job is really about: “It’s finding places for these artworks to live, and to interact with real humans, not just to exist under the bright glare of a gallery lighting system.”
Left: An artwork by Brad Holland hangs in The Darling at The Star Sydney. Right: ‘Spinner Forest’ by Chicago-based artist Nick Cave, installed at a tech headquarters in Sydney.
She returns to “storytelling” when she talks about the ambition behind the work: creating meaning for a business and its patrons. A recent client request illustrates the point. On one hotel project, the head designer specifically asked for tension between the art and the architecture, for the art to feel a little surprising.
“I love creating a little tension,” Vander says. “Good art doesn’t have to be beautiful; you don’t have to fall in love with it. I think it just has to make you feel something, or be a talking point.” That’s a harder needle to thread in a hotel, where the art has to land with guests from vastly different backgrounds all over the world. “But there is a certain amount of tension you can allow, like the art has been collected and chosen with intention rather than just plonked.”
That same instinct for dialogue carries over from client consultations to the gallery floor. “I love talking to new collectors,” she says. “People come into the gallery and say, ‘I don’t know anything about art.’ And I say, actually, you do—if I show you a painting or a sculpture, you’ll tell me whether you like it or not, or that it makes you think or feel something. You might not know who the artist is, but once I tell you their story, you’ll have a connection to them. So actually, you do know about art.”
One of Curatorial+Co’s consultancy projects: The Albert Lounge at Lanson Place Parliament Gardens in Melbourne. (Photo courtesy of Curatorial+Co)
For Vander, the confidence to buy art isn’t reserved for any particular type of collector—a philosophy that extends to who she considers a collector in the first place.
A portrait of the emerging collector and artist
She’s quick to push back on the assumption that a “new” collector is a “young” one. “I think a lot of people haven’t even started their art collections in their forties and fifties.” Downsizers moving into apartments, she notes, often arrive at her gallery looking for a fresh start rather than a first purchase—proof that an emerging collector is defined by where they are, not how old they are.
The same logic applies to artists. Vander is an outspoken advocate for late-blooming talent, pointing to the Aboriginal arts community, where some elders don’t begin painting until their seventies or eighties. Ageism, she says, distorts the market on both sides of a sale—for the collector deciding whether they’re “ready” to buy, and for the artist deciding whether they’re too old to be taken seriously. What closes that gap is education and openness: to be willing to learn, to inform, and to welcome anyone who might show a genuine interest. As she puts it, “Everyone deserves to find good art, and the incredible talents behind it.”
Vander sees this confidence building well beyond her own gallery walls. The Asia-Pacific, she says, has got a really strong market, and a strong group of collectors who are really specific about who and where they’re collecting from. For a region long treated as a follower of Western taste, it’s a reminder that the people shaping its galleries, public spaces, and private walls are setting their own terms.
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In brief: Curatorial+Co
The gallery: Curatorial+Co is a Sydney-based contemporary art gallery and consultancy representing emerging, mid-career, and established Australian artists across painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, and multidisciplinary practice. Founder and director Sophie Vander works with a stable of more than 45 artists, the majority of whom identify as female, and leads a team of eleven. The gallery is located on William Street in Woolloomooloo, Sydney.
The curator: Vander founded the gallery from her home in 2015, before operating out of Redfern from 2020, and eventually moving into a larger space in Woolloomooloo. Before art, she worked as an editor—a background she credits with shaping many of the skills she now applies to curating.
International presence: The gallery has shown work at major art fairs including Sydney Contemporary, Art SG Singapore, and the Aotearoa Art Fair in Auckland.
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