David Bromley

australian financial review article Dec 21 2016 at 11:30 PM 

David Bromley brushes establishment to take his art to the masses 

"If you spend any of your summer holiday shopping, don't be surprised if you encounter the art of David Bromley.

The painter, sculptor and multiple Archibald Prize finalist still does his fair share of traditional portraits for celebrities such as Miranda Kerr, Kylie Minogue and the Kardashians.

But the seemingly laid-back Bromley – a self-taught artist who describes himself as a troubled young man who used to hang with a pretty rough crew – is bucking the art establishment to "play his art out on the street" and has increasingly become corporate Australia's "go-to guy" to leverage their brands and bring his playful and nostalgic style to the masses.

The prodigious painter recently teamed up with Wolf Blass to create a new range of wine labels featuring his most recognisable work – birds, nudes and butterflies – as well as creating a unique and memorable birdcage marque for the winemaker over the Spring Racing Carnival at Flemington in Melbourne.

David Bromley admits his commercial approach has made him a "sitting duck" for accusations of "selling out" or "not creating real art", but he says he is always happy to "decorate the world" rather than play by the industry's traditional practices.

The artist – who splits his time between Byron Bay and Daylesford – has created art and sculptures for Heston Blumenthal's restaurant at Crown in Melbourne, Kookai's retail outlets, a retail sculpture garden for the rich-lister founder of Moose Toys, Manny Stul, and dramatic murals across Chapel Street for paint-maker Dulux. Most recently, he worked with property developers QIC on the $655 million Eastland revamp in Melbourne's East in a series of murals.

Shake-up, not sell-out

"I reckon we did close to 50 murals [in Eastland], we basically lived in that complex wearing hard hats, climbing 28-metre scaffolding, but I just thought what greater thing could you do but climb that mountain every single day for months," Bromley tells The Australian Financial Review from his home in Daylesford.

"We are putting our energy into working on building sites with designers, architects, paint makers, builders and tradies, the more we can interact and do art on a large, accessible scale and take it to people outside the expected creative arenas to me is less claustrophobic.

"There's a word in the art scene to 'sell out' and as a scholar of people like Warhol, Damien Hirst and Keith Haring, we find it incredibly hard to not acknowledge that they turned all of that sort of thing on its head.

"We use those artists to say there are other adventures to go on and our adventure has definitely been to play it out on the street amongst the general population doing things where we try to be thrill seekers."

Bromley's innovative approach has opened the door to working with business on shopping centres, property developments and brands, and he has big ideas to expand into China while continuing to exhibit in his traditional hotspots, London and LA.

"We are working with a few major property developers in the coming year on re-interpretations of even what suburbs are, what cultural things can we bring in? They've seen we have taken on a restaurant, then a shopping centre, then working with a colour, a fashion or a brand."

Stuffy art scene

Bromley admits his commercial approach has made him a "sitting duck" for accusations of "selling out" or "not creating real art", but he says he is always happy to "decorate the world" rather than play by the industry's traditional practices.

"There is a particular structure within commercial art galleries to have a certain political standing, artists are classified by the level of the prices that they receive, the auction prices, and how strong and powerful they are with their exhibiting and collectability record throughout state galleries and institutions," he says.

"I found certain niches, cliches, politics and structures [in the art world], I would go along and think 'wow, I thought I was entering a wonderland but I'm not finding an affinity with this world'. I would meet certain artists and someone would say this person is a creative and I would think my mechanic is very creative, my gardener is very creative, but I would meet this artist and think they are very uptight."

Bromley and his wife and greatest collaborator Yuge have even bigger ambitions for the year ahead with plans for a Bromley hotel in China and collaborations with Shanghai artists and designers in Australia.

"We are opening galleries throughout China, we are opening those with some of the biggest brands in the world and going into some of the very best retail precincts in China," Bromley says."

David Bromley brushes establishment to take his art to the masses australian financial review

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