Sydney-based artist Marko Jovas and his wife Maria with a collection of Marko’s work. Photo: Supplied.
With a number of high-profile art galleries closing in 2025, Bungendore’s art scene is in a state of flux, but 2025 wasn’t all about endings, and the opening of a new collaborative retail space in September may have slipped some people by.
The Artists Shed on Gibraltar Street was launched by artists Margaret Hadfield and Ben Van Eldik along with Ben’s wife, Carole. The quirky shop, which spans two retail premises, is a hybrid art gallery and a rare and collectable toys store.
If that sounds like an unusual combination of passions, it is, yet the melding of toys and art has made for the kind of fun and eccentric space that a tourism-reliant town like Bungendore needs.
The original idea for the shop was born through friendship, with Margaret and Ben going fifty-fifty to combine their work and collections in one space.
“Ben has been a collector of vintage toys for years, and it was his little dream to have a vintage toy shop, and we decided to go halves and have my artwork on the walls in keeping with the Australiana theme of Bungendore generally,” Margaret tells Region.
The Artists Shed is a quirky addition to the town of Bungendore and sorely needed after many retail closures. Photo: Tenele Conway.
The shop is truly one of a kind, and Ben’s toy collection spills out onto the street front and fills every nook and cranny of the premises. There’s everything and anything you can think of. Original Star Wars collectables from the 70s feature heavily, collectable toy cars cover many of the surfaces, there are vintage trucks galore, a pretty pink pedal plane, and you’ll even find Batman and the Joker lurking behind cabinets.
In an effort to lean into their overarching theme of nostalgia even further, Margaret and Ben have just launched a collaboration with Sydney-based artist Marko Jovas to incorporate his works into the space.
Marko’s works of figurative realism often painted on vintage finds fits perfectly with the vintage collection at The Artists Shed. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Featuring 24 of Marko’s pieces, it isn’t so much an exhibition of his work as a merging of his work with the existing collections in the shop. Marko’s portraiture is painted on vintage finds from antique markets, and by their very nature, they fit harmoniously surrounded by Ben’s extensive vintage collection.
“We loved Marko Jovas’s work and thought it would also fit the nostalgia-themed shops. We had become friends with Marko and his wife, Maria, at previous art fairs in Sydney. I admired his work, and he admired mine … we became a mutual admiration society,” laughs Margaret.
Marko shares that his work is figurative realism and he’s inspired by faces and stories. Those faces are a mix of real people such as David Bowie, who you’ll find painted on a cigar box, and Willem Dafoem, who lives on the inside of a vintage camera box, along with fictional faces that are created from vintage photos that Marko collects.
Each of Marko’s pieces has a story to tell. Photo: Tenele Conway.
The stories these characters tell almost feel palpable as they look out at you from their unusual homes, and Marko shares that his wife, Maria, has crafted their backstories with the intention of one day publishing a book that combines the stories with his paintings.
The key to Marko’s work that makes it so captivating is not just the compelling portraits or even the stories yet to be told, it’s the combination of the art and the object, and it’s something you really need to see in person to appreciate.
“So it’s not just a painting; it’s an old object that’s telling a story, and the object is connected to the person in the painting,” shares Marko.
The Artists Shed is located at 10 Gibraltar Street, Bungendore and is open from Thursday until Sunday, 10 am to 3:30 pm. Marko Jovas’s work will be on display until sold out.
