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Gordon and Elaine Syron wish to pay their sincere respects and acknowledgements to the different nations traditional custodians of Australia and their Elders past and present, on whose lands we are privileged to live and work.

We also wish to pay respects to the past and present elders of the families of the photographs and artists which are represented in this website and our past and present museum collection.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website may contain images, voices and names of people who have passed away.

Warning handwritten sign by Lyn Stark, our Aboriginal Curator and Manager of our Bangalow Museum which hung in our museum and also in exhibitions with photos.
 

“I had a dream while in prison to keep the best of my artworks… my dream then grew to keep the best of other Aboriginal artists. 

The Keeping Place is not connected with any institution and we have never received a grant. The Keeping Place Art Collection is priceless to me and is a living testimony to the injustices and ongoing devastation of Aboriginal people, past and present.

These artworks cry out for a benefactor to rescue these remaining stories of massacres and heritage installations. They took our land without asking; now they want our culture, our heritage is threatened by souvenir shops, and even tax-free Aboriginal art is sold by foreigners and made by foreigners. 

White fellas have lots of Keeping Places all over this country, all we want is this one Keeping Place for Indigenous art.”

-Gordon Syron

Mission:

To Keep the Best of Gordon Syron’s paintings
 
To Keep all of Elaine Syron’s photographic collection – all 250 -300 boxes
 
To Keep the best of historical photographs and selected Aboriginal artists’ paintings, sculptures, books, Aboriginal dolls and installations, and curated ideas, digeridoo collection, and artefacts, etc.
 
The selection of the FrontLine paintings will be approved by a small committee of Aboriginal people, Patrons of Keeping Place and Elaine Syron and will add some historical photographs.
-Gordon & Elaine Syron
 

 

 

What is the Keeping Place Art Collection? 

The Keeping Place Art Collection started to be assembled in 1972. The original name given to the collection was Black Fella’s Dreaming. This is the remarkable story behind one of the largest collection of Aboriginal art put together by an individual, who also happens to be an Aboriginal artist himself.

It is the story of a loose cultural movement started in the 1970s by a group of contemporary Aboriginal artists including Gordon Syron, a pioneer of Urban Aboriginal Art. Using their art as a means of expression, they engaged actively in a quest to make it possible for Aboriginal people to record their own culture.

Since its creation, the Collection has been housed, in part or completely, at many locations in QLD, NSW and now ACT, including Darlinghurst, Magnetic Island, Katoomba, Bangalow, Redfern, Minto, Greenwich, Mosman, Middle Head, Eastwood, Rosebery, Leichhardt, Woolloomooloo and Canberra.

The Keeping Place Art Collection now contains the work of over 400 Aboriginal artists, which makes it a unique record of contemporary Aboriginal art created by them since 1972.

A limited number of works are on extended loan to major supporters at NSW Parliament House, and the Arts Law Centre in Sydney, the boardrooms of businesses owned by major supporters, some of whom are Aboriginals, and with private individuals. We acknowledge their long-term support for the vision of the Keeping Place.

At December 2016 the Keeping Place Art Collection is still owned privately by Gordon + Elaine Syron.  Most of the collection is now securely stored in Canberra.  A sub-set of the Keeping Place Collection is to have a permanent home at Ivanhoe in western NSW. Supporters and Patrons of the Keeping Place project are considering options for the majority of the Keeping Place Collection to have a permanent home in Canberra