The Cassandra Bird space slipped onto the scene when it opened late 2023, as a fully formed powerhouse. It’s a white-wall gallery but it manages to pull off high- end and homely at the same time. Immaculately rough floorboards and art-world cool collide in the converted 4- story terrace in the heart of King’s Cross. And then there’s the charming couple making it all happen.
Cassandra Bird has lineage; her aunt, Anne von Bertouch, ran a gallery in Newcastle. Growing up, Cassandra would spend as much time there as she could, regularly taking the train alone up from Sydney, just to be in the space. She was exposed to her aunt’s friends and the artists she showed, Margaret Olley and Charles Blackman amongst them, and as she says now, “I never dreamt of doing anything else.”
Her husband Fabian Jentsch comes from a theatre and festival background, where he’s focussed on the ability of performance art to effect social change, while enriching people’s lives.
The road to Bird having her own space was supposed to be smooth, but as all the best outcomes prove, it involved a lot of hard work, an unexpected twist in a legacy, a dash of luck, and the time it takes to get somewhere on your own. If Cassandra had been handed everything on a plate, she can see now that her journey might not have taken her from working in galleries in New York, to starting her own arts organisation, Momentum, in Berlin, where she met her husband, to being the rjght- hand of Roslyn Oxley as the Associate Director of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery for 10 years. Their dynamic working relationship gave Cassandra a fantastic platform from which to launch her own space.
The client list at Cassandra Bird is growing, and they’re already selling to museums and public galleries, a feat for a new gallery, and their artists work has been commissioned for public spaces.
Bird wants the whole project to be more than just a gallery. She’s passionate that incorporating an experimental art space adds to the ecology that Bird and her husband are creating and growing – not just for the artists who spend time there, but for the whole local and international art community. She hopes an ebb and flow can exist between the exhibition space, the creation space, and the rest of the world, with exciting possibilities, and movement and travel are part of that. Whether a piece of work or an artist is jetting in from the other side of the world to get to Kings Cross, or someone who loves art is wondering in from the street, the programme plans to definitely have an inclusive and international flavour. The residency programme is already up-and-running, and the current resident is Emily Hunt, who just opened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with her show The Grotto. If you haven’t been to Cassandra Bird yet, it won’t be long before it’s not only on your radar, but you have been pulled into its orbit.
Cassandra Bird
54 Kellett St, Potts Point 2011
Sydney, NSW Australia
Opening hours
Tuesday – Friday, 10am-5pm
Saturday, 11am – 5pm
and by appointment.
next show
Janet Laurence
Alchemical Gardening
July 04 – August 17, 2024
