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What adorns your work space, office, board room, foyer and corridors? If you have any kind of art work, does it exemplify good quality art practice? If it is indeed a significant artwork, does it echo national pride? Have you examined Zimbabwe’s many high calibre artworks when considering how to decorate your office walls?

The National Gallery of Zimbabwe believes that it’s time for you to liven up your workplace, and what better way of doing that than investing in original local art. We are here to help you make your office proudly Zimbabwean!

Art@Work is a new campaign that the National Gallery of Zimbabwe has embarked on; you are invited to jump onto the band wagon. There is a reality that in many African countries such as Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, government and corporate offices are oozing with local culture. Many offices echo national pride through the carefully picked local works of art that sport their spaces.

Paintings, sculptures, prints and calligraphy embellish offices that would otherwise be bland, thus giving visitors a true taste of national heritage.

Zimbabweans must harness the opportunity to uphold their culture and showcase whilst appreciating Zimbabwean talent too. What you place on your walls will influence the cultural values of future generations.

Art@Work will seek to give the Zimbabwean audience an opportunity to explore, appreciate and comment on the various artworks placed in different work spaces around the country. We will publish pictures of these works online for your viewing.
If you had an insider’s tour of the offices of power brokers, government officials and influential business people in our nation’s capital, what would you see?

Perhaps you have wondered into these edgy new or refurbished offices and lounges, admired the interior design, and luxuriated in beautiful furniture. But have you noticed that art?

Art works in corporates communicate value. Beyond the emotional attachment to a piece of art, one of the additional attractions is that it’s an object more likely to holds its value compared to most consumer products. It is as if it has the ability to be good investment alongside being a beautiful thing. It’s a combination of beauty, investment and ambiance!

The National Gallery of Zimbabwe realised that too often both artists and galleries are concentrating so hard on that elusive and mythical “serious” collector that they completely overlook the opportunity to foster the potential interest from “normal” and local people. Even serious collectors were once first-time buyers. So we have stopped chasing collectors only and we are now scouting for new potential collectors as well as those corporates who collect but have not yet received due cognition.

Everyone is a collector and this is the most important thing to realise. It is necessary for everyone to understand that collecting art is not just something for rich people, which is how the media often portrays it when they report on big auctions or exhibitions and nor does affordable art have to mean formulaic, easy work.

A key factor within investment of art is to buy what you like, from reputable sources. But how does the beginner art investor educate their taste to decide on their likes or dislikes? Where do they start to look for high quality art by reputable artists?

That cute framing place down the road may have some really great pictures in it! An artist who churns out mass-produced works may lack the sincerity and innovation to realise proper investment returns.

We are always looking for new talent. Adding new talent is important because each art programme we sell needs to be unique and fresh, not a repeat on what we did for another client.

The relationship we want to foster between the artist and the corporate is one of mutual respect with the goal of placing artwork in the corporate setting.

Whether an artist is well established or taking their first steps to putting their work out there, a good physical gallery puts work in front of new buyers, sellers and generates sales and interest, educates buyers about their work, creates new fans and brings opportunities their way. This is what we aim to do.

Trends in artwork change and evolve like fashion and interior design styles. In the 1990’s a typical corporate art programme consisting of framed photographs, canvasses and posters.

With recent advent of digital printing the whole scope of art offerings has expanded, and it is very exciting.
Today art programmes are more interesting consisting of three-dimensional and digital printing on substances such as acrylic, bamboo, tile and fabric. Canvas wrapped works are commonplace too and often an entire art programme will consist of these types of pieces in various sizes requiring no framing.

A shift from all framed pieces to a blend of framed pieces and three dimensional wall pieces can be noted in this new trend.
Healthcare clients definitely want more dimensional work while law firms and commercial real estate businesses are still purchasing framed work. Overall there is more opportunity for artist to create three dimensional works.

The good news is that corporate decision makers are very open to seeing all kinds of artwork and they understand the significance artwork plays in the overall design of the facility.

The idea behind Art@Work is to draw feedback from decision makers that will be helpful in directing artists to create appropriate artwork in terms of colour, subject matter and scale, while remaining sensitive to budget.

While many corporates invest in artworks to be placed in office spaces to provoke creativity and spark within the staff, artworks are also placed for the benefit of the client.

The process of discovering a piece of work, bidding, buying it and taking it home for the first time is exciting and  rather addictive experience!

That is the thrill of collecting – no matter what you are interested in or how big or small your budget is.
There are three ways that you can participate in Art@Work and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe is here to support you throughout the entire process.

1. Corporate clients are encouraged to loan out the National Gallery of Zimbabwe’s permanent collection art works. We house the largest art collection in the nation; this is over 6 000 works which include traditional and contemporary sculpture, paintings, textiles and prints. We could help you choose significant works that we own, and then loan them to you annually.
2. Commission through the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. We have trained, worked with and promoted countless local artists since our inception. We have the largest database of artists in the nation.
We can help you identify the right type of artwork for your office, then commission an artist to meet your specifications.
3. Show off your office by allowing the National Gallery of Zimbabwe to reveal your proudly Zimbabwean office.
If you are already far ahead of pack, and already have good quality local artwork in your office, we encourage you to allow us to take pictures of your space and show them to the rest of the nation. That way, they too will be encouraged to take part in the campaign.

Already many offices are way ahead in the game and these include Star FM, Livingstone House, Jameson Hotel, Rainbow Towers, the Causeway Building, Social Security Centre, the Parliament and Livingstone House amongst others. Restaurants such as Denny’s in Bulawayo and Bannie’s in Harare liven up their space up with artwork and create a comfortable energy for their clientele to enjoy their meals.

The Catholic Church’s Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Harare also houses paintings by a contemporary artist so whether it is looking for art for your working space, home or chapel; Art@Work is here to provide you with Quality Art for all your requirements.
Let your work space showcase reveal your proudly Zimbabwean sensibility.