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Among the myriad paintbrushes, paints, tools, musical instruments and personal effects scattered around the floor of Brett Whiteley’s former studio stands a battered green wicker chair.
“Nobody’s allowed to sit in there,” says Wendy Whiteley, former wife, art patron and muse of the iconic artist. “The last bum in there was Brett’s. That was his chair. He brought that chair with him wherever he went.”
Wendy Whiteley believes her former husband would have been happy to see the work done on his studio. Steven Siewert
It’s typical of the fierce protectiveness Wendy maintains over the legacy of Whiteley, who died in 1992 from an accidental drug overdose.
Wendy ensures everything, down to the last tiny item, in the upstairs room of what was Whiteley’s final home in Surry Hills is kept as it was when he died in a Thirroul motel room.
“This is the heart of the building,” she says, gesturing around the studio. “Most people say the kitchen is the heart of the building. But this is the heart of the building here.”
The building in question is now a gallery space, The Brett Whiteley Studio, owned by the Art Gallery of NSW. The three-storey former T-shirt factory reopens today after closing in June 2024 for a meticulous renovation project to bring the building up to contemporary museum standards.
Work carried out includes the installation of a lift, better disability access, a new roof and the addition of a library. The challenge has been to upgrade the structure without losing the authentic spirit that draws thousands of visitors each year.
Whiteley arrives in Sydney with his wife Wendy and daughter Arkie in 1969.
Martin Brannan
“When we first finished this refurb, I walked in and it was just a big empty building with white walls,” says Wendy. “I freaked out. I thought, ‘Oh my god, Brett’s not here any more’. But the minute we started putting the stuff back and brought the pictures in, he was back. That’s the power of his work. With the work comes the personality.”
The reopening will be marked by talks and events and a new exhibition, Brett Whiteley: Coming Home. On display will be works from 1969 when the Whiteleys were living in Fiji (they were famously ejected from the country by the Fiji government when Whiteley unwisely talked to locals about his marijuana use) and later after the family returned to Australia.
Curator Beatrice Gralton, who has worked at the studio for the past five years, says the place constantly has more insights to offer into Whiteley’s life and his practice.
“I always find something new when I come back to the studio, which I love,” she says. “I think that’s the thing about working here. It’s a very unguarded way to understand an artist’s practice. You get to understand the depth of the collection and the arc of a person’s creative production. The bad hair days and the good hair days and the ebb and the flow of all of it.”
The iconic green chair in the Whiteley studio.
Surry Hills in the late ’80s was a very different place from the gentrified suburb it has morphed into now. Edgy and grimy, it was home to many creative types who have since become household names.
“Paul Kelly moved in around the corner and dropped over the album he’d just released with a little handwritten note saying, ‘Dear Brett, I think you might like to listen to this’,” says Gralton. “I was going through the record collection a couple of years ago and I found that note. I thought, ‘Ooh, he was just living around the corner.’ So there was such a community here.”
Whiteley in his studio in 1985.Gerritt Fokkema
Gralton has closely overseen the refurbishment by architects Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, even carefully preserving the sound of the original floor.
“It was like an archaeological kind of experience,” she says. “Even down to the squeaks and creaks in the floor. That was really important to maintain. The architects had said, ‘Do you want us to change that? We can fix that.’ And it was like, ‘No, no, no, no. It’s part of the studio’. You come in here and it’s a squeaky kind of place.”
Wendy has pronounced herself very happy with the result of the project, but what might Whiteley have thought?
“I think he’d be OK with it,” she says. “He’d be quite happy. I mean, he’s been looked after incredibly well since he died. He’s still getting a lot of attention, which is what it’s all about. There’s no point having these places unless people are actually coming to them. There’s no point in being an artist unless you’re sharing it with somebody.”
The Brett Whiteley Studio, 2 Raper St, Surry Hills, is open to the public Thursday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm. Entry is free.
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