Not Your Average

Words by Ella V Reid
Image by Simon Strong

A new commercial Gallery taking the barriers of art to a whole new level. Compendium Gallery is situated above The Melbourne Compendium tattoo studio in the heart of Armadale.

Not your average gallery owners, Kris Sunkee and Sam Nugent (Insamnia) are two iconic Melbourne tattoo artists who refuse to let their creative expression be confined to the skin of their clients. Sunkee and Nugent, after buying the space above their tattoo studio, turned the space into a commercial gallery space to showcase the prominent Contemporary artists that Australia has to offer. Though this is not limited to those who only identify as fine artists. Sunkee and Nugent also exhibit works by prominent tattoo artists as well. It is often believed that many, if not all tattoo artists work exist on either the screens on their ipad and then transferred in the deep layers of their clients skin. The Compendium boys have created a space that breaks apart that stereotype and exhibits beautiful art objects created by some of the most notable tattoo artists both in Australia and Internationally.

This is also not limited to themselves. Both Sunkee and Nugent are prolific painters, who paint stunning canvases, both inspired by their tattoo styles but also by some key figures in the art world such as Caravagio and Dalí. Though still tattooing in their own personal styles, their artistic explorations they exhibit on canvases are not bound by a client's wishes or constraints, which allows them the creative freedom given to any other Contemporary artists working in today's art climate.

With the help of Elle Zoltak, someone who has made her mark in the Australian art scene, working as an ambassador for multiple art fairs and having years of commercial gallery experience, Zoltak manages the gallery’s day to day as well as curating the shows.

The gallery has been involved in breaking barriers between art and tattooing, having recently been involved in the Rites of Passage tattoo expo. Both the gallery and tattoo studio had their own booth, with the gallery exhibiting works by artists who had held previous shows at the Compendium gallery such as Ben Howe, Christopher Tóth and Terry Taylor. The display also included works by tattoo artists Benjamin Laukis, Natalie Nox and the Compendium boys.

The Compendium boys, like any other tattoo studio, have guest artists and apprentices who are also invited to allow their creative energy to run free. Hosting a monthly ‘Paint Night’, tattoo artists, apprentices and gallery assistants are invited to sit down in front of an easel and either paint a live model or a piece they have been working on. This alongside with their tutelage and any advice the boys can offer to enhance the skills of the next generation of tattoo artists.

Together Sunkee and Nugent have created a space unlike any other. What they have built is an environment that has broken the ideology that the fine art world and the tattoo world are not synonyms with each other.

Rites of Passage 2023

Compendium Gallery recently exhibited at Rites of Passage Tattoo Festival, held at The Royal Exhibition building, Carlton.

Artists: Terry Taylor, Ben Howe, Kris Sunkee, Insamnia, Christopher Tóth, George Kennedy, Benjamin Laukis, Natalie Nox and Helio Bray and Jack Moxey.

Artist Profile Magazine

A Compendium of Riches by Ashley Crawford. Photographed by Simon Strong

The art world and the art of the tattoo have long held each other at a wary distance.  While they often share an adherence to certain formulas, and both suffer from cliched notions of ‘what is art?’ where they most often differ is in terms of media. Not ink, which can and does apply to both, but in the medium to which it is applied, which in tattoo art is, of course, that infinitely tricky canvas of the human epidermis.

Tattooing as a fine art has a history as long as human culture itself, from the ritualistic, such as that of the Maori, to the narrative, seen with the Yakuza. In the Western world, the tattoo is often relegated to the realm of the decorative. An exception in Australia to this has been artist and tattooist eX de Medici who also works on paper. A ‘collector’ of Medici’s work once offered her flayed skin to the National Gallery of Australia upon her demise, no doubt to the dismay of the gallery’s curators.

In an attempt to cross the existing divide between the art and tattoo worlds, the founders of the hyper-influential tattoo studio The Melbourne Compendium, Kris Sunkee and Samuel Nugent, have joined forces with gallerist Elle Zoltak to establish the Compendium Gallery, a space that will rattle all of the bars between mediums.

Located in High Street, Armadale, the new gallery takes over from the space established by Scott Livesey Gallery who have moved down the road. The Melbourne Compendium tattoo studio will run from a space beneath the exhibition space.

 “The tattoo studio will have a gallery space with rotating art by tattoo artists and once a year we will curate a tattoo artist to exhibiting in the main space,” says Zoltak. “Both owners, Sam and Kris, have been tattooing and painting in multiple forms for over 12 years each, so having a gallery owned by artists gives us a great framework and advice to help both upcoming and established artists.”

MORE ON SAM AND KRIS

The gallery will focus on emerging artists with some established names, including occasional artists represented by Scott Livesey. “The first year or so we’ll be exhibiting a variety of different styles which favour towards the more realistic and surrealistic oil paintings, but we want to exhibit all styles and genres of art,” says Zoltak.

And the selection thus far is eclectic indeed. In June Compendium will exhibit Harry Bayston, a painter and sculpture RMIT Graduate, and in July, Zac Chester, an exuberant painter who lives with Down Syndrome and is also an actor and dancer.

In September, the space will host a major showing by Ben Howe,  a painter who the team spotted at the NotFair Art Fair of which Zoltak is a board member and curated by gallery director Kris Sunkee.

Howe is an Australian-based artist born in London, UK. Over nearly two decades, he has explored the nature of consciousness, personal history and the incongruities of memory through his artwork, which has taken him to England, Germany, China and the USA. Howe is known for his signature quasi-scientific aesthetic that is at once hyper-realistic yet reductive. His at times stark and lonely works are often derived from preliminary explorations in other media such as sculpture, photography and film; his process distorting the boundaries of the real and the perceived.

Following that, Compendium will host a group show of RMIT Painting Graduates, Marion Abraham, Karen Eriksen and Michelle Yuan Fitz-Gerald and RMIT Photography Graduate
Parminder Kaur, while in October they will feature the photography of established artists Deborah Paauwe and Mark Kimber. In the smaller space they will feature Amander Westley, a young Indigenous (Ngarrindjeri from Encounter Bay in South Australia) female painter.

From the graphic imagery of some of Australia’s top tattoo artists to the painterly and photographic, Compendium promises to be a vibrant and fresh space for Melbourne’s ever burgeoning art world.

Zac Chester 2022