Why Do Creative Risks Pay Off?
With so much of the workday spent on screens, offices need places for the eye to rest. The corporate art collections that thrive understand this, filling the workplace with artworks that feel intimate and interesting.
At Art Pharmacy, an art consultancy working with workplaces across Australia, we’ve seen a clear shift towards more varied collections. Traditional painting is still very much alive in the corporate space, but demand for ceramics, sculpture and digital art is growing. That demand shows that breaking from the usual office decor pays off. A varied collection keeps a workplace feeling fresh, gives people a reason to come into the office, and leaves clients looking forward to their next visit.
Here are a few ways our corporate clients have taken creative risks, and why you might want to as well.
Why Add Ceramics to a Corporate Art Collection?
The handmade quality of ceramics reflects a growing interest in objects that feel grounded and real. Ceramic pieces can quietly pick up the colours of walls, chairs and tabletops, and they make natural conversation starters, so a meeting never has to begin with a cold open. Their tactile quality offers the break from screens that so many of us want during the workday. Many ceramics are also highly sustainable objects, using natural materials on a small scale to create beautiful colours.
How Does Sculpture Change a Workplace?
Sculpture frees the mind from what people expect a corporate collection to look like. It invites you to move around a piece and see it from different angles. That small shift in how you engage with a space can spark fresh thinking in employees and clients alike.
What Size Sculpture Suits Your Office?
Sculpture comes in all shapes and sizes. Larger works such as Kien Situ’s Shanshui (Portal) suit a lobby or hallway, while smaller pieces can complement a meeting room without taking over. Tabletop works like Giorgia McRae’s Jack also make lovely accents in rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows.
How Do Exhibitions Work in a Corporate Space?
Not every artwork needs to stay on the walls year-round. Temporary exhibitions let a workplace mark holidays, events and cultural moments, and a strong, wide-ranging collection gives a company a voice in those moments. They’re a reminder that work isn’t separate from the rest of life.
For example, Art Pharmacy worked with 1 Denison to present Forever Strong, an exhibition celebrating NAIDOC Week. The works responded thoughtfully to that year’s theme, “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy.”
Why Consider Digital Art?
Not all screens are tiring. Some are just waiting to become a canvas. If there’s a blank screen in your office, digital art can turn it into a contemporary creative space.
Digital work can also be rotated. Installations can run for as long as you like, or be curated to suit the season, a holiday or a new chapter for your company. Just as you might rearrange a lounge room or repaint a sunroom, you can swap one installation for another and keep your work environment dynamic through art.
Interested in adding digital art to your collection? Visit our sister company, Sugar Glider Digital. We work with hundreds of artists to find the right piece to bring that idle screen back to life.
Is It Worth the Risk?
Bringing different art forms into your workplace lets your office go beyond what people expect. When art moves off the wall, the space feels more inspired and complete. It becomes somewhere people want to work and explore, and a place clients would rather visit in person than meet online.
Taking that risk also tells everyone who walks in that you’re open-minded and looking ahead. Just as history celebrates the great royal collections for shaping their creative eras, your workplace can become a voice for contemporary art and design.
Article by Tabitha Noel Curry