Shaping Futures: Collections Through Connection
Founded on shared community values and a collaborative spirit, the 47 Easey Street–based gallery Sarah Scout Presents champions artists and builds community across art, design and culture.
Christian Thompson & Simone Slee, installation view, Sarah Scout Presents 2024. Photo by Lauren Dunn.
When Vikki McInnes and Kate Barber established Sarah Scout Presents in Melbourne in 2008, the idea of creating a gallery to support underrepresented artists and collective values felt both urgent and overdue.
“While working within academic institutions, we noticed a significant gender imbalance in the art world,” explains Vikki. “Art schools had a much higher number of female-identifying students, but those same women were not being collected or represented at the same rate after graduation.”
“We both felt that creating a space — and developing a market — for artists with more conceptual and challenging practices, was one of the best ways we could offer meaningful support for our represented artists,” says Kate.
The pair were each navigating academic careers when the vision for their own gallery began to grow. At the same time, both were becoming new mothers, prompting a shift in their ways of working and creating. The exciting convergence of these new personal and professional ventures led to the gallery’s name, inspired by their children.
“Sarah is Kate’s daughter’s middle name, and Scout is my daughter’s. We wanted to create a conceptual figure rooted in feminist thinking, community and generosity,” Vikki explains. “We have always wanted to offer a supportive and generative platform, one that could counter some of the entrenched systems of exclusion within the commercial art world, particularly around gender and representation of marginalised groups.”
Kate Barber & Vikki McInnes. Sarah Scout Presents, 47 Easey Street. Photo supplied.
That generosity, for artists, audiences and ideas, has remained at the heart of their practice. From early days in a small tenancy above a Bourke Street bookshop, to their expansive new home at 47 Easey Street, Collingwood, where the porous, neighbourly building helps sustain a strong community.
“Being part of a creative ecosystem within this building has been transformative. There’s a natural exchange between us, not just creatively but practically as well. It is both professionally enriching and deeply community-oriented,” says Kate.
“Even though our new gallery is significantly larger, it still retains a sense of domestic warmth. That sensibility is shared with our neighbours.” The result is a gallery space that invites conversation rather than spectacle – one that feels both refined and approachable.
Sally Smart, Dancetté (The Artist’s Dress), installation view, Sarah Scout Presents 2025. Photo by Nicholas Mahady.
Sarah Scout’s reach has expanded in scope as well as scale. In 2014, the gallery co-founded Spring1883: a hotel-based art fair that reimagined how art could be experienced, through the immersive takeover of suites.
“The concept emerged from a moment of dissatisfaction with traditional art fair models. We wanted something more personal, more human, a way to connect artists, gallerists and collectors in an intimate setting,” says Vikki.
The Spring1883 model enables young emerging galleries and their artists to gain exposure alongside leading iconic names in the Australasian art scene. This year’s edition saw younger and emerging galleries – the likes of Strawberry Gallery and Animal House Fine Arts, both based in Melbourne; China Heights Gallery from Sydney and NAP Contemporary out of Mildura – present alongside highly respected and established galleries, such as Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney, Michael Lett out of Auckland and Sullivan+Strumpf (Melbourne/Sydney/Singapore).
“The fair champions both established names and rising talent, challenging conventions through its presentation context in a luxury hotel and engaging with new collectors in fresh, meaningful ways,” says Kate.
Held within the suites of Melbourne’s The Windsor, Spring1883 blurs the boundaries between public and private space. “Hotels – particularly older ones – can sometimes feel a bit static and institutional, but they reveal a completely different side of themselves through an artistic lens,” says Vikki. “Bringing contemporary and First Nations works into a space historically embedded in colonial architecture, for instance, challenges its legacy. It opens up to new perspectives and possibilities.”
From humble beginnings, their community continues to grow, recently finding audiences at art fairs in India and Auckland. Sarah Scout Presents is currently preparing to show at Material in Mexico City, an exciting new step. In an era of constant flux, the gallery stands as a reminder that art’s most enduring power lies in relationships: between people, ideas and place.
Sarah Scout Presents, Spring1883, The Windsor, Melbourne 2025. Photo by Nicholas Mahady.