Editors Letter: Victoria Tulloch
Since joining the Archie Rose family eight or so years ago it's been an enormous pleasure and privilege to seek out and work together with a range of artists across our labels and brand. So as we lift the curtain on our most recent artistic collaborations, the flower shop inspired September Gin created together with creator Bryce Heyworth from September Studio and artist James Drinkwater, and our 2025 summer art labels painted by Nicole Nelius, it’s also a great pleasure to be serving as guest editor for this Journal issue.
Incorporating art in its many splendid forms into what we do at Archie Rose over the last ten years has been both a deliberate and intuitive choice, shaped as many things often are at Archie Rose by the diversity of great people in our 100-strong team and their tastes.
From day one, our ethos around the highest quality Australian grown ingredients has taken artistic pride of place, serving as a centrepiece for a range of collaborations, as brought to life by artists including: Edith Rewa, a magnificent botanical illustrator who adorns this year’s celebratory tenth birthday Tailored Gin and Vodka labels; Melanie Vugich, who effortlessly produced art that restored joy during long lockdowns as represented on our Native Botanical Cocktail range; Gemma Leslie from Food For Everyone, who created the perfect orange twist for last year’s Tailored Whisky label; and this year’s feature artist, Nicole Nelius, who brings whimsy, shells and an intoxicating palate of teal and coral to our 2025 seasonal labels.
Australian grown ingredients have also served as an artistic showcase for our Harvest range of gins and whiskies, as created by our design studio partners Terry and Matthew Squadrito from Squad Studio, and artist Heidi Willis through her gorgeous depictions of poorman’s orange, sunrise lime, lemon scented gum and raw honey. Our latest Harvest Gin release, Emerald Finger Lime Gin, is a glorious scene of vibrant caviar like finger lime pearls, spilling from the fruit as painted in beautiful watercolour by Jodi Hooker, our Design & Packaging Manager.
Around six or so years into our now ten year journey, we managed to summarise our love of art, culture and innovation into the brand phrase ‘unconstrained creativity’, which together with ‘heightened experiences’ now serves as a more formal guiding light to our creative and artistic forays.
They’re phrases that have served as a protagonist to ideas and works created by a very talented collective of LGBTQIA+ artists, to celebrate our four year gin partnership with Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras including art by Luke John Matthew Arnold, Ashley Ronning, Micke Lindebergh and Claudia Chinyere Akole across Tailored Gin labels as well as playing cards and a very special Archie Rose x LBDO Essensual Lube created for Sydney WorldPride 2023. With the announcement of Archie Rose as Mardi Gras gin partner for the next three years, we’ve once again begun one of our favourite jobs of selecting our next artistic collaborator.
We’ve been an incredibly proud partner to the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) for the last six years, which has included our Tailored Spirits providing a showcase to the Know My Name initiative, with the goal of increasing the visibility of women artists across the world, including this uplifting work by Marian Tubbs. In 2022 the NGA held a retrospective of Australian artist Cressida Campbell’s works, and we were granted the great privilege of bringing Cressida’s Gingko, 2016 to life via a label on this very special Cressida Campbell Gin. It was a very generous bequeath and we feel enormously happy to have been able to display her work this way.
Two of my personal favourite collaborations have been with NSW artists Elliott Routledge, who helped to show us the potential that lay in inviting artists to interpret spirit botanicals as our first Tailored Spirits feature artist in 2020, and now with James Drinkwater, with three boldly abstract and adventurous artistic works depicting the floral work of Bryce Heyworth at September Studio.
I’ll finish with a final special shout out to the resident artists on our own team including: Jodi, Zik and Brooklyn in the design team, and Yujo, for her heartfelt caricatures of the team as Tailored Gin gifts. A big thank you to all the collaborators who have helped shape our artistic journey over the last ten years.
