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Adam Cullen’s work often takes the form of satire and social allegory, encapsulating insightful yet confronting views of contemporary existence. His vibrant and boldly expressive paintings regularly have as their subject matter the darker aspects of the subject, portraying them in a unique and provocative way.
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Ahmad Naser Eldein is a Palestinian photographer based in Montreal. He regularly contributes to various print publications and online platforms. He has also participated in multiple collaborations and solo exhibits in Palestine and Canada.
His research interests tackle representations of queer and political identities. Through his portraits he aims at capturing the human physique that reflects expressions of emotions and states of mind.
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Aida Tomescu is an Australian contemporary artist, who is known for her abstract paintings, drawings and prints. Tomescu is the winner of Dobell Prize for Drawing, the Wynne Prize for Landscape and the Sir John Sulman Prize by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The seed of her career as a painter became planted in Aida Tomescu while studying at the Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest in the late 1970s, when she closely studied the work of Cezanne and his legacy through cubism. She read Kandinsky's famous essay, 'Concerning the spiritual in art' ... When she emigrated to Australia from Romania and took up study at the City Art Institute in Sydney in 1980 she was ripe for a dedication to abstract painting from which she never wavered
Through my work in the tradition of collage I am pursuing a very personal obsession of creating narrative scenarios in small format. By using antiquarian books, it makes the work simultaneously an exploration and a deconstruction of nostalgia.
We create our own past from fragments of reality in a process that combines the willful aspects of remembering and forgetting with the coincidental and unconscious.
On a general level, I aim to illustrate this process that forms our inner landscape.
By using pre-existing media as a starting point, certain boundaries are set by the material, which I aim to transform through my process. Thus, an encyclopedia can become a window into an alternate world, much like lived reality becomes its alternate in remembered experience. These books, having been stripped of their utilitarian value by the passage of time, regain new purpose. They are no longer tools to learn about the world, but rather a means to gain insight about oneself.
I make book sculptures / cut books by working through a book, page by page, cutting around some of the illustrations while removing others. In this way, I build my composition using only the images found in the book
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Alex Scheibner trained as a blacksmith under Guido Gouverneur in Sydney between 1994-1997. Followed by two years at Granger Forge. This led to his working in Los Angeles USA, along side Tony Swatton supplying hand forged armour and swords to Hollywood. Scheibner also completed his training as a mechanical fitter.
It was a natural progression to move towards sculpture where years of developing both his understanding of the nature of metals and his metal working skills could take on such varied applications. Scheibner's work stretches from delicate hand forged poppies to large scale, modernist, geometric stacks and public art installations.
From his purpose built workshop at Talerwin Forge in the picturesque setting of Rylstone in the Central West of NSW, Scheibner continues to diversify his art practice
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Amy McGregor is a photographic artist based in Canberra. Her work explores the potential of photography to generate speculation and narrative with minimal information. She draws from the aesthetic and icons of television and film from the 1970s and 80s
In 2010 she Graduated Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours, 1st Class) from the Australian National University and has been exhibiting ever since.
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Andrew Nicholls is an Australian/British artist, writer, and curator whose practice engages with the sentimental, camp, and other historically-marginalised aesthetics, and traces the historical recurrence of particular aesthetic motifs. He is especially concerned with periods of cultural transition during which Western civilisation’s stoic aspirations were undone by base desires, fears or compulsions, and with 18th century Britain's fascination with, and paranoia of, other cultures and 'othered' identities.
While primarily drawing-based, his practice also incorporates ceramics, photography, installation, performance, and filmmaking. He particularly draws inspiration from heritage sites and museum collections, and has coordinated and participated in residencies at locations including Greenough Hamlet (Australia’s third-most-significant heritage site), Spode China (at that time the UK’s longest-running ceramics factory still based in its original location), Midland Railway Workshops (the southern hemisphere’s most intact remaining Edwardian industrial site), the Freud Museum London (family home of the founder of psychoanalysis), and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (George IV's seaside pleasure palace). In 2015 he was allowed exclusive access to photograph Donatello's David, by the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, as part of a body of work investigating aesthetic legacies of the Grand Tour. In 2017 he was the first Western Australian artist to undertake an ArtSource residency with Residency Unlimited, in Brooklyn, USA, and most recently undertook a residency with Grey Projects in Singapore, in early 2020.
Nicholls has exhibited across Australia, Southeast Asia, Italy and the United Kingdom, including solo exhibitions in Perth, Canberra and Sydney, Australia, and Plymouth, England. He has been the recipient of two Creative Development Fellowships from the Western Australian Government, and undertaken commissions for several organisations in Australia and the United States, most recently a $250,000 ceiling mural for the City of Perth Library, and a major drawing commission for the Artbank collection
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Andrey Avinoff emerges as an important historical figure. He was a gay Russian artist who made it in the very straight world of American science and education, and an autocratic European traditionalist who helped create the modern, anything-goes New York scene. His intriguing body of artwork, multifaceted interests, and equally multifaceted identity significantly enhances our understanding of twentieth-century art, in all its vitality and complexity, Throughout his life, Avinoff was known worldwide for his scientific research on the influence of geography and ecology on the evolution of butterflies. But also for his beautiful watercolors, meticulously painted that expressed his ideas about the unity of nature and life. Many of Avinoff's works can be read as symbolist fantasies or surreal nightmares, iridescent butterflies, exquisitely detailed flowers, translucent surfaces, reflective elements such as water, soap bubbles, gemstones, and jellyfish.
His private feelings as well as his loyalty to Russian traditions and a deeply spiritual view of nature are expressed in his work.
Friend of Alfred Kinsey, of whom he made a portrait, which made a reading loaded with sexual connotations of his work. Avinoff was quite reserved about his private life, although there is no doubt about his homosexuality, you just have to look at his work and a wonderful portrait of Nijinsky, of whom he was an admirer, in which the dancer turns into a butterfly.
But the reason I brought this Russian entomologist art because of the wonderful drawings he made to illustrate George Golokhvastoff's poem, "The Fall of Atlantis." within a cross between symbolism and surrealism - of which we have one.
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Warhol was an US painter, film-maker and author, and a leading figure in the Pop Art movement.
Andrew Warhola was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents had emigrated to the USA from Ruthenia, a region now in the Slovak Republic.
Between 1945 and 1949 Warhol studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1949, he moved to New York and changed his name to Warhol. He worked as a commercial artist for magazines and also designed advertising and window displays.
In the early 1960s, he began to experiment with reproductions based on advertisements, newspaper headlines and other mass-produced images from American popular culture such as Campbell's soup tins and Coca Cola bottles. In 1962, he began his series portraits of Marilyn Monroe. Other subjects given similar treatment included Jackie Kennedy and Elvis Presley. The same year he took part in the New Realists exhibition in New York, which was the first important survey of Pop Art.
In 1963, Warhol began to make experimental films. His studio, known as the Factory, became a meeting point for young artists, actors, musicians and hangers-on. One of these, Valerie Solanas, shot and seriously wounded him in 1968.
Warhol was now established as an internationally famous artist and throughout the 1970s and 1980s exhibited his work around the world.
On 22 February 1987, Warhol died unexpectedly in a New York hospital following a gall bladder operation
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Anna Carey (born Gold Coast, lives/works LA) is a visual artist whose practice overlaps both photography and sculpture.
With memory and recall as the only reference of permanency, she interweaves model-making, drawing and photography to create fictive architectural spaces based on the urban environments of cities such as her hometown of the Gold Coast in Queensland, alongside Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Palm Springs.
Throughout her art practice, Carey focuses on architectural spaces as a medium to open up an imaginative realm for the viewer. She employs fragile cardboard constructions, documented in video and photographs to express and access the psychological sensibility beyond manufactured physical façades.
Billy Bain is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist of Darug descent, the traditional Aboriginal people of Greater Western Sydney. His practice unpacks and challenges presumptions of Australian Identity, subverting and humouring Australia’s colonial iconographies and narratives. Born and raised on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Bain creates work that explores his experiences as an Indigenous man existing within urban Australia, a place where he and his family’s presence and survival has been systematically denied. With a practice that spans ceramic sculpture, oil painting, etchings and installations, Bain creates new narratives that discuss a contemporary idea of what it means to be a young Indigenous person in Australia today.
Born in Manly (1992), Sydney, Bain is currently based in Darlinghurst holding a Creative Live/Work Tenancy with the City of Sydney. He is a casual lecturer at UNSW Art & Design where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours first class) in 2019. In 2022 he had his first solo exhibition with a public gallery, “Being Manly” at Manly Art Gallery and Museum. In 2023 Bain is a finalist in both the Wynne and Sulman Prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2022 he was a finalist in Shepparton Art Museums biannual Indigenous Ceramic Awards in Victoria and the was awarded the Macquarie Emerging Art Prize.
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Brad Walls is an Australian aerial photography based in Sydney. Best known for his use of close up top downs, Brad specialises in aerial portraiture and a minimalistic approach to aerial photography.
Utilising one of the first consumer drones, Brad Walls stumbled across his passion for aerial content through stitching small video clips together taken during his extensive travels. 18 months on, Brad has refined his skillset, with a vision to strive and see the world from a different angle creating the perfect metaphor for his work.
Brad Walls has worked with many exclusive brands in the luxury hotel space including Longinnes, Elements of Byron, El Nido Group, Plataran Hotels and Soori Bali. Brad had his work featured in tourism publications including Indonesia, Philippines, Spain, Australia and Iceland.
Awards:
Most influential Aerial photographer in 2019/2020
• Drone multimedia
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Artist Brendan Kelly lives and works in Mullumbimby, NSW Australia. He is a trained Graphic Reproduction apprentice and has studied book illustration and dynamic drawing.
Brendan Kelly’s first experience with paint was working with his father on his home growing up in Australia in the 1970’s. A moment where he recalled his father painting a green figure on the side of a box has stayed with the artist, establishing his first curiosity with paint and art. After some experimenting as a teenager, Kelly’s creativity burgeoned through a variety of artistic pursuits. Training as a Graphic Reproducer with a large printing company inspired cartoon drawing and poster art, and after relocating to Mullumbimby, the peace and isolation of living in the native bush created a sense of nostalgia and a yearning for something more
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The whole opus of Brett Whiteley represents astonishing and prolific journey into the depths of human psyche. The intensity of colors, unusual composition, and selection of motifs suggest the artist’s superb draftsmanship. Nevertheless, in order to understand the conceptual side of Whiteley’s work it is necessary to enter the realm of esotericism and higher state of consciousness. By letting himself loose from any proposed frame, in sense of art and life, the artist tried to examine various phenomenon’s and express them through the paintings
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A well-known fashion photographer and filmmaker from America, Bruce Weber was born in 29th March 1946 in Pennsylvania. His fashion photographs appeared in 1970s for the first time in GQ. His agent and friend Nan Bush secured a contract in 1978 for Weber with the Federal Department Store to shoot the mail catalog of Bloomingdales. In 1980s, Weber came to public attention and in the 1990s he started taking commercial photos for Calvin Klein. His photo of Tom Hintaus for Klein has been an iconic image. He has also taken pictures to Ralph Lauren’s winter collection for 2006.
Some of Weber’s images were given national limelight. These pictures featured nude heterosexual duo facing one another while on a swing; Marcus Schenkenberg in loose dropping jeans; and two dressed men on bed. His work has also been a topic of controversy. For the SoHo Weekly, Weber photographed men wearing only underwear. At this time, Weber thought that his career is at stake and that he doesn’t like working in a lot of magazines since they have many issues and this is risky for him.
In the 1980s, Weber collaborated with Chris Isaak to take his picture for his album. In 1988, he photographed Isaak shirtless in bed for a fashion page in the magazine Rolling Stone. Weber was also the director of one of the Isaak’s music videos called Blue Spanish Sky.
In 1990 another controversial episode took place when he directed Being Boring by Pet Shop Boys. Female and male nudity in the video stopped it from being aired on United States most popular music channel MTV. Moving away from controversies, six years later, for the same group he directed another song Se a vida é in a water park in Florida. In 2002, he was the director of a song from Release album, titled I Get Along. Moreover, he has taken photos of Harry Connick, Jr. for Blue Light, Red Light – an album of 1991. Two years later, he photographed Jackson Browne for I’m Alive, 1993.
Weber seldom does color photography, however most of his works are monochrome. His works are collected in books, such as Looking Goor: A Guide For Men, 1977; Bruce Weber, 1983; The Sun and the Shade, 1983; O Rio de Janerio, 1986; Bruce Water, 1989; Sam Shephard, 1990; Bear Pond, 1990; Bruce Weber, 1991; Gentle Giants, 1994; The Chop Suey Club, 1999; Blood Sweat and Tears or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Fashion, 1999; and All American XII, 2012.
Apart from photography, Bruce Weber also made film on boxers in their teen years, and another on his adored dogs. Chop Suey (2000) was a much longer film by him. The photographer has also been the director of a documentary film Let’s Get Lost. Other films he has made are: Beauty Brothers, and Broken Noses 1987; Backyard Movie 1991; Gentle Giants, 1994; The Teddy Boys of the Edwardian Drape Society, 1996; A Letter to True, 2004; and Wine and Cupcakes in 2007.
His photos are in the permanent possession of Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Paris’s Museum of Modern Art. His work has been exhibited in New York’s Whitney Biennale, Venice’s Palazzo Fortuny, Switzerland’s Musee l’Elysee, Florence Biennale, London’s National Portrait Gallery, Los Angeles’s Fahey/Klein, Tokyo’s Parco Exposure Gallery, Washington, D.C’s Russell Senate Building, and Milan’s Galeria Corso Como.
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Born in Poland and currently based in Australia, Cezary Stulgis is a sculptor, painter and designer whose highly distinctive work fuses next-level aesthetics with classical craftsmanship.
A reflection of his artistic roots comes from the street art movement of the mid-eighties. Additionally, he has formal training as a sculptor and painter at the renowned Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Poland
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Hood attained a Master of Visual Art at Sydney College of the Arts.
Her thesis investigated gender politics in art and cultural mores and taboos surrounding the representation of the male body. After high school Hood attended art school at St George Tech for two years without finishing her diploma, she then went to Italy for six months to study Sculpture and Italian language. Hood was inspired by her teacher at St George the famous sculptor Bert Flugelman.
Hood returned to art education as a mature age student in 1991 and spent 3 years studying painting at the National Art School, she continued her search at Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney) and attained her Undergraduate and Honours Degrees before doing her Masters of Visual Art.
Hood continues to be passionate about art education often describing her experience at Art School as a "gift". She tries to give back a little by teaching and conducts workshops and gallery talks.
During her 20 year painting career Hood has had countless solo exhibitions and is often included in group and theme exhibitions at museums and institutions. Hood was the winner of the 2002 Archibald Prize, the most prestigious painting award in Australia, with her portrait of the young pianist Simon Tedeschi. Hood was one of seven women winners in the long history of the award.
Hood had been a finalist the year before with her very first entry in Archibald Prize. The work - a watercolour on paper - of her brother-in-law the artist Matthew Gerber was remarkably the first watercolour on paper to be hung in the Archibald. Later Hood painted David Helfgott, Ben Quilty and in 2010 Michael Zavros which were also hung as finalist works.
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Clara Adolphs is based in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Completing her Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales in 2008, she has since held solo exhibitions throughout Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Clara has been a finalist in numerous Awards and Prizes, including the Archibald Prize in 2016 with her portrait of actor and musician Terry Serio, The Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship,The Portia Geach Memorial Award and winner of the Emerging Artist Award in The Mosman Art Prize in 2012 and 2017.
In 2017 Clara was awarded the Eva Breuer Travelling Scholarship, with which she will undertake a 3 month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2018.
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Craig Medson was born on the Gold Coast and studied sculpture in Brisbane before leaving for Italy in 1981 to work with marble in Carrara. He returned to Australia in 1985. He was a leading Queensland sculptor who since 1980 has had many group and solo exhibitions in New South Wales, Queensland and in Italy where he has studied on many occasions. Craig has completed many corporate and private commissions both in Australia and overseas. He was an accomplished teacher of sculpture and has been involved with many workshops. As an invited participant in International Sculptural Symposia across the world including in Spain, South Korea, Cyprus, Turkey, Japan and more, his works can be seen publicly in each of these countries. In 2005 he was the project manager for an International Sculptural Symposium on the Sunshine Coast - a resounding success at the Maroochy Botanic Gardens, now a wonderful destination for art lovers. He committed suicide in 2015 after long bouts of depression.
"The materials I use in my sculptures have been around since time immemorial; marble, sandstone and bronze have been used in sculptures for thousands of years. I like the permanence of these materials but I like to use them in a contempory manner - give them a fresh approach by sometimes combining two or three materials. Stone sculpture has always had connotations of heavy, dense mass. I try and make my sculptures appear light and rhythmic, often belying the weight they really are. I also like to add the element of movement to add more interest. My aim is to try and create sculptures that emit an aura of beauty, of harmony, balance and peace”
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Craig Ruddy was an award winning contemporary artist who lived and worked in The Pocket in Northern NSW Australia.
He was born in Forestville, Sydney, in 1968 and pursued a career in design. He quit his position as a commercial art director in 2001 to pursue his passion for fine art.
Craig Ruddy was renowned for his dramatic figurative portraits that are often interwoven into richly textured abstract landscapes. Ruddy’s art practice explores the space between our real and mythical connections to the land and environment.
His work reflects a deeply personal ongoing spiritual journey, where the artist explores questions of social conscience as well as current environmental issues. The recognition of Australian Indigenous People and Culture is also a core theme that has permeated the narrative of his past work and exhibitions.
Craig Ruddy’s inimitable painting style pushes the traditional boundaries of this classic medium. His work process involves a complex layering of mixed mediums that include paint, charcoal, pencil drawing, varnish and even glass.
Ruddy’s figures become inseparable from the landscapes in which they reside. His unique use of layering creates an illusion of transparency, whereby the foreground and background seem to both simultaneously co-exist and disappear, becoming one and the same. The illusory technique mirrors a deeper spiritual metaphor; the interconnectedness of all things.
The artist’s work was a continuing tribute to his surroundings, country and the people that reside within it. Ruddy’s practice was intuitive and organic. His use of free flowing sensitive lines combined with a vibrant, dynamic colour palatte result in bold paintings that are both sensual and powerful, aptly reflecting the inspiration he draws from the Australian landscape
In 2004 Ruddy won the Archibald Prize for his charcoal drawing of David Gulpilil entitled Two Worlds. The portrait of the Aboriginal actor won both the $35,000 Archibald portrait prize and the People's Choice Award.
He died aged 53 from COVID-19 complications, in the arms of his long term partner, actor Roberto Meza Mont, at their home in Byron Bay
Daniel Hollier lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Working primarily with ideas of Observation and Ambiguity within the field of Painting and Sculpture. Hollier’s practice employs a range of contradictory processes and attitudes that celebrate The Minutiae of the Everyday.
Hollier teaches Drawing and Art Processes at Sydney School of Architecture, Sydney University. His work is represented in the collection of Artbank as well as private collections in Australia, United Kingdom and Holland.
Daniel is a graduate of Ceramic Arts of Hornsby TAFE, NSW, Australia. His interests are form, design and colour. His work is typically sculptural, either wheelthrown, handbuilt and or slipcast. He also produces items for commercial display purposes sold nationally and internationally. Daniel’s colour palette varies from project to project, be it exhibition participation or client brief. He works with traditional oriental glazes, slips containing stains and reduced paste lustre. Daniel is a signed artist regularly featured at Artsite Gallery, Camperdown, NSW. In 2015, Daniel began writing the regular feature, Surface Therapy, for The Journal of Australian Ceramics, an online resource for makers. Surface Therapy is a conversation on glazes and other surface treatments working through the information maze and sharing wisdom from experienced practitioners.
He’s currently working on the central coast
David Collins was born in Perth, Western Australia. Specialising in photography and video media David graduated with an MFA from Sydney College of the Arts in 2017.
David’s work has been displayed in several exhibitions including solo shows at Perth Centre for Photography and STILLS Gallery as well as group exhibitions such as Pingyao photography festival in China.
His work has been reviewed in publications Australian Art Collector Magazine, Art Guide Australia, Scoop magazine and The Age, and is held in collections including the Art Gallery Of Western Australia and the University Of Western Australia’s Lawrence Wilson Gallery.
David McDiarmid was a painter, poster designer, installation artist, fabric designer, craftworker and gay activist. In the mid-1970s he was known for the exquisite hand-painted textiles he produced for 'Flamingo Park’, the fashion house run by Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, but from 1975 all his work, regardless of medium, was about gay experience. Involved with the Sydney Gay Liberation movement since 1972, his first solo exhibition Secret Love, held at Sydney’s Hogarth Galleries in 1976, featured collages explicitly exploring gay male sexuality, anti-gay legislation and public and private sexual hypocrisies. He visited the USA in 1977 and fully participated in its wildest gay scenes. After returning to Australia, McDiarmid lived almost continuously in the US from June 1979 to December 1987. After returning to Australia at the end of 1987 McDiarmid immersed himself in community art projects. He did all the posters for Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras from 1989 until his death.
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David Warren from Melbourne, studied fine art majoring in painting and graphics. Painter, teacher and graphic artist has exhibited since the early 1960's at Gallery A Melbourne and Sydney, Powell St and Powell St Graphics, Holdsworth Gallery Sydney and Maria Perides Gallery, Brisbane. Currently represented by Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne and Robin Gibson Gallery in Sydney. Currently lives and works in Metung, Victoria and exhibits regularly in Melbourne and Sydney. Represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia the National Portrait Gallery, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Warrnambool Art Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, Art Bank, Pratt Graphics Collection, New York and private collections in Australia and overseas. Current works focus on the male and female nude, landscape and portraiture, working primarily in the mediums of oil paint, watercolour and graphite
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Born in Bury St Edmunds in the UK, she studied art from 1958-1960 at Braintree College, with John Jale Clark and Deidre Mackay (painters & sculptors.
Emigrated to NZ in 1966 she then, iIn the 70s, studied at the University of Otago, Denedin School of Fine Arts for a Dip F A Painting with William A Reed & Roy Dickerson.
From 1981 - 1988 she was involved in management roles with the Auckland Society of Arts and worked with many private galleries. In 1988 she returned to London and continued art studies at the London Polytechnic. She returned to Sydney in 1990.
The artist has over 60 group and solo exhibitions to her credit and has works in public, corporate, trust and private collections in NZ, Australia and England.
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Donald Stuart Leslie Friend was an eccentric man of wide-ranging creative talents: a great painter , an exceptional figure draftsman, and a gifted satirical writer . Exhibiting widely in Australia during the 1950s and 1960s, Friend also produced many books, stories and diaries, including the controversial and erotic Bumbooziana, which was published in 1979
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Painter and teacher at the National Art School for almost forty years, Thornhill was the second wife of her former teacher, Douglas Dundas.
She was born in Sale, Cheshire, England, daughter of a Unitarian minister. After migrating to Auckland, New Zealand, where she studied at the Elam Art School (1924-29), the family settled in Sydney. Dorothy attended the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College under Frederick Britton and Douglas Dundas in 1929-32. Classical mythological subjects featured strongly in her work at this time; Diana Resting (1931) was only one of what may have been intended as a series of works on classical themes. Death of Eurydice (c.1931) and an untitled group of four female nudes from 1932 are held in a Sydney private collection. Her nude self-portrait entitled Study , evidently done at about this time, is inscribed from her studio, ’4 Dalley St. City’. Thornhill’s forceful and vigorous representations of women bear a striking similarity to those by the then popular European painter Tamara de Lempicka.
In 1933 Thornhill returned to England to study at the Royal Academy under Sir Walter Russell and F. Ernest Jackson, concurrently attending Roger Fry’s lectures at the Courtauld Institute. She returned to Sydney in 1934 and was appointed teacher of figure drawing at the National Art School, East Sydney Technical College, in 1937, a position she held for almost forty years. In 1941 she became the second wife of her former teacher, Douglas Dundas; they had a studio and flat at Edgecliff decorated in grey and lemon.
Thornhill had begun exhibiting with the Society of Artists in 1929 and was elected a member in 1942. As well as exhibiting frequently in group shows, she had two solo exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries in 1940 and 1948 and a retrospective exhibition in 1977. At the last a former student, the painter Brian Dunlop, stated that her drawing, devoid as it was of formula and cliché, was among the finest ever produced in this country. Thornhill died in Sydney on 15 May 1987
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Grant was born at Rothiemurchus, Inverness-shire, the son of Major Bartle Grant and Ethel McNeill. His childhood was spent in India. He returned to Britain in 1893. Although his family intended him to have an army career, he took up painting at the encouragement of the French painter Simon Bussy, entering the Westminster School of Art, London, in 1902. He spent 1902-3 in Italy, where he copied Masaccio. He attended Jacques-Emile Blanche's school, La Palette, in Paris in 1906-7, before returning to London to spend one term at the Slade School of Art. Through Bussy he met Matisse in 1909. He subsequently set up his own studio in Fitzroy Square, London. He visited Greece in 1910, and frequently visited Paris before the war, making several visits to Picasso's studio.
Grant was a central figure in the circle of artist and writers known as Bloomsbury, which included Grant's cousin Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Virginia's sister the painter Vanessa Bell and Vanessa's husband the critic Clive Bell. Grant and Vanessa Bell were closely associated in their professional and personal lives for more than fifty years. In 1913 Roger Fry founded the Omega Workshops, of which Grant and Vanessa Bell were directors. The workshops produced furniture, pottery and textiles designed by various young artists including Grant and Bell themselves. The Omega Workshops closed in 1919. In 1916 Grant and Bell moved to Charleston near Firle, Sussex. They had a daughter Angelica in 1918. Together they decorated several houses, including Charleston, and carried out other commissions, including decorations for the church at Berwick, near Firle (1943).
Grant exhibited at the New English Arts Club from 1909 and the Friday Club (founded by Vanessa Bell) from 1910. He became a member of the Camden Town Group in 1911. In 1913 he exhibited with the Grafton Group, whose members included Fry, Bell and Wyndham Lewis. Influenced by the works of the Fauves and Cézanne in the first Post-Impressionist Exhibition of 1910-11, Grant contributed to its successor in 1912. He participated in the Twentieth-Century Art show at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1914. He became a member of the London Group in 1919. His first solo show was held at the Carfax Gallery in 1920. He was a member of the London Artists' Association from 1929 to 1931. He was represented at the Venice Biennale in 1926 and 1932, and his work was included in the Coronation Exhibition of Contemporary British Artists at Agnew and Sons, London, in 1937. He designed sets and costumes for various theatrical productions. A retrospective of Grant's work was held in 1959 at the Tate Gallery, with subsequent Arts Council tour. He was given a retrospective at Wildenstein & Co., Ltd., London in 1964, a two-person show with Bell at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, in 1966, an Arts Council tour in 1969, and solo shows at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, in 1972 and 1975. In 1975, in honour of his ninetieth birthday, exhibitions were held at the Tate Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
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Born at Walungurru, Elizabeth is the daughter of Frank Tjupurrula and Mary Napanangka.
Elizabeth Nakamarra Marks lives to the east of Kintore, in the Northern Territory. Her languages are Pintupi, Luritja and, from her mother's side, Warlpiri. She is a member of Papunya Tula Artists Pty. Ltd., one of the later generation of women artists to join this important, Aboriginal owned and operated cooperative, based in Kintore and Kiwirrkura. Her father died when she was an infant and Elizabeth was raised by her stepfather Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula and uncle Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, both esteemed artists of the Papunya Tula art movement. She married the late Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, also a key artist of the Papunya Tula movement, with whom she had three children Angelina, Peter and Farren.
Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra studied for three years at the Bachelor College in Alice Springs and served as a council member in Kintore for two years where she worked assiduously assisting her community members.
Elizabeth began painting in her own right in 1998 after her husband died, painting her father’s (Tjupurrula) stories from the area of Kalipinya, located approximately 400km west of Alice Springs and north of Sandy Blight Junction. Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra paintings revolve around the subject of the Dream Time, the time before man walked the earth, when a huge storm caused lightning to flash and the water torrent formed the landscape creating rock holes and creeks. Her paintings incorporate elements of the storm, lightening, flash flooding, important rock holes, soaks and creeks. She is known for her Escher-like paintings, which use one colour, with a contrasting lighter hue, on a black background. The straight lines are made up of dragged dots, and are drawn at ninety degrees to each other to build retreating and advancing line-tunnels.
Emil Cañita (he/she/they) is a trans Filipino sex worker and artist. Emil’s distinctive art practice involves the use of gloryholes as a creative medium. Within these intimate spaces, they document encounters with their subjects, capturing the rawness and vulnerability that can often be found in moments of sexual connection. Through video recordings, storytelling, and Polaroid snapshots, Emil invites viewers into a world that is often hidden or misunderstood, challenging preconceived notions and allowing for deeper engagement with their art. By sharing these intimate narratives, Emil confronts societal taboos, dismantles stereotypes, and encourages viewers to question their own perceptions of identity and desire. As Emil’s artistic journey continues to evolve, they remain a vital force in redefining the boundaries of art, sex work, and personal expression.
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Macleod was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1956 and moved to Sydney, Australia in 1981, where he continues to live and work. He received a Certificate in Graphic Design from the Christchurch Technical Institute in 1975 and a Diploma in Fine Arts (Painting) from the University of Canterbury in 1979. Macleod deals mostly with landscapes and the human presence within it. The lone, anonymous figure is a common symbol in his work that embodies both the artist's self-portrait and the "Everyman" or universal experience of emptiness, worthlessness and impotence. He has been described as both an expressionist and a symbolist and his dense, textured and sculptural use of paint has become a consistent feature of his work. Macleod is not limited when it comes to the landscapes he paints, feeling equally at home in the picturesque New Zealand countryside and the harsh and flat Australian outback and often painting a hybrid of both landscapes. As well as pursuing his art he is currently also teaching painting at the National Art School in Sydney
Biography:
1966 Born Sydney
1985-88 Bachelor of Education (Art) - City Art Institute, Sydney
1990-91 Graduate Diploma (Fine Arts) = College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Sydney
Exhibitions:
1987 Womens’ Work - Cell Block Theatre, Sydney
1988 Destination - Graduating Students Exhibition - CIty Art Institute, Sydney
1989 Annual Douglass Art Awards - Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney
1990 Travelling Art Scholarship - The Works Gallery, Sydney
1990 Block 5 - The Works Gallery, Sydney
1990 Winsor & Newton Australian Art Awards - Coventry Gallery, Sydney
1991 Inherent Identity - Performance Space, Sydney
1992 Solo Exhibition - Coventry Gallery, Paddington, Sydney
1993 Sir John Sulman Prize - FInalist, Art Gallery NSW
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Francis Lymburner (1916-1972) was a Queensland-born artist who was educated at Brisbane Grammar and took art classes at Brisbane Technical College.
Just before the war he moved to Sydney, where he haunted Taronga Park Zoo, making a great number of drawings of animals. In his early twenties he contributed illustrations to the Home magazine. In 1948, Sydney Ure Smith recognized his talent for drawing animals and published a book of his work, after which he achieved some success in Sydney.
Throughout the 1950s he travelled and studied in Europe and the UK, living in England from 1952 to 1964, drawing in theatres, zoos and parks. He came back to Australia enthusiastic about exhibiting his work, and Ure Smith published another volume of his drawings and paintings in 1965. However, the following year his career was cut short by a cerebral haemorrhage.
In 1992 the AGNSW held a retrospective of his paintings and drawings; his work is held by most major galleries
Gareth Ernst’s work focuses on the intimate and fleeting, on mortality, desire, surveillance, and masculinity. Like the writings of Jean Genet, Gareth Ernst’s paintings, drawings and videos are illicit love letters. They deal with the secret and the underground, touching on the pornographic and the criminal. They are rapid, urgent and complete, revealing secret Worlds parallel to our own.
His studies of the human form are uncompromising and direct. Gareth’s work disrupts the tradition of idealising the male form, and instead uses it as a vehicle for exploring the themes of power, vulnerability and innocence. He often achieves this through unorthodox pop culture inclusions and juxtapositions with medieval memento mori symbols—Darth Vader masks, leaked police surveillance videos, stuffed Pokémon dolls and even nibbling mice dress his works. For his audience, these juxtapositions are destabilising and contradictory, creating tension with the erotic charge of the subject’s exposure.
Gareth has completed his Fine Arts degree in Drawing (Honours) at the National Art School and is currently a Masters student at the National Art School specialising in Painting.
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Geoff Dyer is a renowned landscape and portrait painter whose work depicts Tasmania and its people. Dyer was born in Hobart and studied at the Tasmanian School of Art between 1965 and 1968. He started exhibiting in the 1970s while working as a teacher and then a lecturer, initially at the Launceston School of Art and then at Burnie Technical College. In 1995, he won an Art Gallery of NSW residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Primarily a landscape artist, much of Dyer’s work is inspired by Tasmania, his subjects including such iconic places as the Franklin River, the South West World Heritage Area and, most recently, Cradle Mountain and Lake St. Clare. He has been a finalist in the Wynne Prize nine times (1977, 1988–1993, 1997, 2004); and the Sulman Prize twice (1997, 2006). Dyer paints one portrait per year (generally of a fellow Tasmanian) for entry in the Archibald Prize. He became an Archibald finalist for the first time in 1993 with his portrait of environmentalist and former federal leader of The Greens, Bob Brown; and ten years later took out the Prize with his portrait of novelist Richard Flanagan and he was a finalist in the 2011 prize for his portrait of MONA founder, David Walsh, Dyer was commissioned by the Tasmanian Government to paint the official portrait of former state Premier Paul Lennon for the Parliament House collection. Dyer has exhibited regularly in solo and group exhibitions since 1970 and his work is represented in many collections, including those of Artbank; the University of Tasmania; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston
Figurative expressionist printmaker and sculptor Geoffrey Ricardo was born in Victoria and received a Bachelor of Arts from the Chisholm institute and a graduate diploma in printmaking from Monash University. He has held solo exhibitions since 1990 in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Monash University, Melbourne; the Print Council of Australia, Melbourne; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, VIC; Heide Museum of Modern Art, VIC; the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne and internationally in Tokyo. Ricardo was awarded the National Student Art Prize in 1989, the Mornington Regional Prize in 1994 and the Warrnambool Prize in 1988. He has lectured in printmaking at Monash University, the Victorian College of the Arts, RMIT and the National Art School Summer School. His work is held by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; the Print Council of Australia, Melbourne and several university and regional collections.
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Gillie and Marc (and their dog “Indi”) have been called “the most successful and prolific creators of public art in New York’s History” by the New York Times. Creating some of the world’s most innovative public sculptures, Gillie and Marc are re-defining what public art should be, spreading messages of love, equality, and conservation around the world. Their highly coveted sculptures and paintings can be seen in art galleries and public sites in over 250 cities. They’re Archibald Prize Finalists and have won the Chianciano Biennale in Italy, together with winning 2 years in a row People’s Choice Award in Sydney’s Sculpture by the Sea, among other notable awards and accolades.
Referred to by the media as “the world’s most loving artists”, this artistic duo has worked side by side for 27 years, creating art as one and spreading the love they have for each other with the world. The artists first met on a film shoot in Hong Kong and 7-days later they ran away to Nepal to get married on the foothills of Mount Everest. They’ve been inseparable ever since.
The artists are best known for their beloved characters, RABBITWOMAN and DOGMAN, who tell the autobiographical tale of two opposites coming together to become best friends and soul mates. As unlikely animal kingdom companions, the Rabbit and the Dog stand for diversity and acceptance through love. Gillie and Marc believe art is a powerful platform for change. Their art is multi-disciplinary, paying homage to the importance of togetherness, as well as the magnificence of the natural world, and the necessity of preserving it – for we are it, and it is us
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Slovenian born, NZ Sculptor Gregor Kregar works with numerous materials, including glass, video, stainless steel, wool and ceramics. Kregar’s sculptures are often monumental and consciously subvert audience expectations, encouraging a reconsideration of the meaning of his subjects and materials.
Dismissive of genre constraints, Gregor Kregar employs a disparate range of materials and media – aluminium, glass, stoneware, plastic, cathode lights, soundscapes, photography, video, even live sheep – to achieve his vision. “My practice is driven by ideas and I choose materials or media according to the concepts in my work,” says Kregar. “Part of what I find exciting about sculpture is experimenting with a range of different techniques and properties. I like pushing the limit of materials, taking them outside of their usual use or historical context, creating an element of surprise for the viewer.”
Kregar graduated MFA from the University of Auckland, School of Fine Arts (2000). He has work in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery
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Heinz Steinmann was born in Switzerland, 1943.
Art is very much a family affair for Heinz as his Swiss father Max Steinmann (1918 - 1994 ) was an outstanding artist of the Ecole Nationale des Beaux - Arts, France. Heinz's Australian born sister Evelyn Steinmann and his Japanese born wife Miwako are also dedicated artists.
In 1958, when Heinz was 15 the Steinmann family left Switzerland to settle in Australia.
He completed his education at Bathurst High School in 1961 with first class honours.
Instead of going on to university he headed north for the Gulf Country with a rifle and sketch book. He spent two years crocodile hunting as a living with sleeping bag and mosquito net as outdoor 'home' for months at a time.
After the croc hunting years he held numerous short term jobs to back his drawing material, including railway fettler and survey chainman in the remote bush north of Mt. Isa.
At 26 he turned to his art as a full time career which started on the opal fields of Lightning Ridge in 1969 before moving permanently to Far North Queensland.
He celebrates 50 years as full-time artist in his beloved far North Queensland. His paintings are best known as poetic interpretations of the tropical rainforest; Babinda, Port Douglas and the landscapes and characters of the Gulf Country and the Cape York wilderness, including Jowalbinna.
Over the past five decades Steinmann has long become one of Australia's widely recognised artists with many successful solo exhibitions in the leading galleries of most states.These included The Australian Galleries, Melbourne; Holdsworth and Wagner, Sydney; Lister, Perth; Solander Canberra; Schubert, Gold Coast ; Adrian Slinger and Philip Bacon in Brisbane.
Heinz Steinmann also achieved considerable acclaim in Europe with important exhibitions in Zurich, Inverness and Munich together with the ZDF television documentary of his life and work.
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Herman Pekel was born in Melbourne of Dutch parents. Herman’s first solo art exhibition was held in Melbourne at the age of 17 and was a sell-out success. Herman’s tonal works in oil and watercolour range from city to landscapes, to café and bar interiors, to dynamic industrial scenery. They all demonstrate the best of contemporary impressionism. Herman is a multi-awarded painter: a three-time winner of the coveted Camberwell Gold Medal Art Prize and a winner of the prestigious Alice Bale Award in 1989 and 1993. Herman is a longstanding member of the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society. Herman is a painter with immense talent and insight, and continues to actively exhibit across Australia and internationally
Renowned as Australia’s foremost surrealist painter and poet, James Gleeson’s oeuvre explores the human condition beyond visible reality and the limitations of the senses through powerful enigmas of fleshy biomorphic, mechanical and illusionistic landscape forms. In addition to his contributions to surrealism, throughout his career Gleeson made important contributions to the Australian art world as a dedicated writer, critic and affiliate of a number of art institutions
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Jasper Knight is a Sydney-based artist. From 2005-2019 Knight has been a finalist in the Archibald prize seven times. He has been a finalist in the Wynne Prize four times, the Sulman prize twice and the Moran prize twice. He was awarded an Australia Council Emerging and Established New Work grant, the Freedman Foundation Scholarship and the Rocks Art Prize. He has also been a finalist in the Blake Prize, The ABN-Amro Prize, The Helen Lempriere, The Brett Whiteley Prize and was the 2008 winner of The Mosman Art Prize. In 2007 he opened Chalk Horse gallery with the generous support of the Australia Council and the City of Sydney. Knight has shown in Sydney, Melbourne and at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair. His work is in almost all NSW regional gallery collections, Artbank and the National Gallery of Australia
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Frank Jeffrey Edson Smart was an expatriate Australian painter known for his precisionist depictions of urban landscapes that are "full of private jokes and playful allusions". He was born and educated in Adelaide where he worked as an Art teacher. After departing for Europe in 1948 he studied in Paris at La Grande Chaumière, and later at the Académie Montmartre under Fernand Léger. He returned to Australia 1951, living in Sydney, and began exhibiting frequently in 1957. In 1963, he moved to Italy. After a successful exhibition in London, he bought a rural property called "Posticcia Nuova" near Arezzo in Tuscany. He resided there with his partner until his death
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Jody Graham is a Newtown-based artist whose work encompasses drawing, mixed media, sculpture and installation. Fascinated by the energy, visual chaos and dark soul of the city, particularly its construction sites, industrial foreshore and older buildings, Graham is known for her bold, expressive urban landscapes, exploring themes of impermanence, loss and erasure, “documenting what’s happening before our eyes”.
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John Beard’s work has been exhibited worldwide and is held in the collections of major gallery museums and institutions.
Born in Aberdare, Wales in 1943, Beard studied at the University of London and the Royal College of Art. Beard has had a distinguished teaching career throughout England and Australia co - producing and appearing in a series of programmes for BBC television in the UK, before arriving in Western Australia in 1983 to become Head of Fine Art, at Curtin University, Perth. In 1989. he resigned from teaching in order to devote his full attention to his practice, Beard traveled extensively, living and exhibiting in New York, Madrid, Lisbon and London before establishing a Sydney base in 1997.
In 1998 he was Artist-In-Residence and his work was the subject of a solo exhibition titled After Adraga at the Tate St Ives in the UK. In 2000/1, His work Wanganui Heads was selected to represent the year ‘1998’ in The London National Portrait Gallery’s Painting the Century, a Hundred years of Portrait Masterpieces. In 2002, Beard exhibited in HEAD ON: Art with the Brain in Mind, at The Science Museum, London, England. He held a solo exhibition titled After Adraga II at the The Gulbenkian’s Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon, Portugal, and at The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. In 2009 the late William Wright curated a survey exhibition titled Headlands, works from 1993 -2007 for The Drill Hall Gallery in Canberra. In 2010 a large body of work titled Gesichtlos- die Ästhetik des Diffusen/ Faceless- the aesthetics of Diffusion, was exhibited at Kunsthalle Darmstadt in Germany. His most recent solo shows in London have been at Hales Galley and at The Fine Art Society Gallery. In 2013 he exhibited at The Royal Academy of Art’s exhibition titled ‘Australia’ .
In 2006, Beard won the Art Gallery of New South Wales Wynne Prize for Landscape painting, and, in 2007, he won the Art Gallery of New South Wales Archibald Prize for Portraiture.
In 2009 he was appointed as Professorial Visiting Fellow in the School of Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. and in February 2010 he became a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
In 2011 a major monograph of his work was published and launched in London at The Royal Academy of Art by Charles Saumarez Smith and in Sydney, at The AGNSW by Edmund Capon.
The artist divides his time between London, Sydney and Europe.
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Everything my brushes or pencils produce becomes a natural ingredient. Being a longtime Anglophile, my landscapes are largely Great Britain-inspired and are records of what my eyes have seen and my mind remembered. The illustrator in me creeps into both figure work and landscapes, I hope as an adjunct and not an intrusion. Recently I have added still life to the figure work and landscapes.
John Lear has been an active artist for over 70 years. From his early social realist works of the 1930s to his surrealist visions of the forties, which recall the desolation and destruction of World War II, he has developed a mysterious idiosyncratic personal style. He classifies his work as "records" and "creations." The records are those images, mostly landscapes, which he finds in nature and records by the camera: the artist as objective observer. While stimulated by photographs taken on site, he will intensify or exaggerate the sky or shadows to present an "other-worldly" sensation, thus bridging the division between his "records" and "creations."
His "creations" are composites of realistic yet disparate images in dream-like landscapes. After an exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1943 of his early Daliesque paintings, one critic described Mr. Lear as "the Philadelphia surrealist." His more recent paintings of idealized male figures, reminiscent of the classical Greek form, displaying their youthful bodies amidst a landscape littered with architectural fragments and broken shards, suggest hope and reconstruction.
Many of Mr. Lear's images are drawn from memory, using his own photographs and sketches of the figure or animal illustrations as aids. Regardless of subject matter, his primary concern is with formal concepts: composition, color, and the proximity of the images to the edge of the painting. He is adamant that his pictures tell no stories: of one watercolor he says, "Why the goldfish is floating in mid-air – I'm afraid I haven't got an answer." Rather, he is concerned that the juxtaposition of his figures and objects pique the viewers' imagination. These paintings are a tour de force of Mr. Lear's illustrative talents: figures now share landscapes populated by animals of ominous mien and by intensely colored banners suggestive of medieval pageantry. Similarly, the circus celebration – a little "out of this world" – provides a perfect setting for Mr. Lear's art
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John Coburn attended East Sydney Technical College from 1947 to 1950, later marrying silkscreen printer Barbara Woodward in 1953. That same year he attended an exhibition of French painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales that profoundly influenced his work. Coburn realised that just as Matisse and Picasso gave consideration to international and indigenous art in their work, he could draw from Aboriginal art and its spiritual connections to the landscape in his own painting. In 1960 Coburn achieved prominence as the winner of the Blake Prize and from 1969 to 1972, he worked in France, designing tapestries for the Aubusson workshops.
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Also known as Jack Gardner. Artist (Photographer), Artist (Painter), Designer (Graphic Designer), Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator)
Mid 20th century Melbourne cartoonist, commercial artist (from necessity), landscape painter (by choice) and amateur photographer. Visited and taught painting at Hermannsburg, NT, in the 1930s.
Studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne. In the 1920s he met Rex Battarbee at C. Leyshon White’s Commercial Art School in Melbourne and they became close friends. (Battarbee had no fine art training.) Both worked as commercial artists doing advertising art but wanted out. Alison French says that Gardner drew cartoons for various [travel?] magazines.
Gardner and Battarbee visited Hermannsburg in 1932 (in a model T Ford sedan converted into a caravan) and again in 1934. Batttarbee took most of the photographs on the trip (and later taught Albert Namatjira how to develop them), but Hardy states that Gardner possibly took the photograph of Battarbee painting at the Finke Gorge in Central Australia in 1932. Battarbee left crayons behind in 1932 and Gardner apparently claimed to have given Albert Namatjira lessons in watercolour painting before Battarbee did (see Geelong Advertiser 20 July 1987, Kleinert etc., cited Hardy & Megaw x 2). This would still have been in 1934, on Gardner and Battarbee’s second trip when they were accompanied by Robert Croll, another keen collector of Aboriginal artefacts. Namatjira certainly saw the exhibition of Gardner & Battarbee’s paintings in the Hermannsburg schoolroom in 1934 (described as the first ever held there by Croll in the Melbourne Herald , cited Hardy – however, this may have been preceded by an exhibition by Jessie Traill ); it was then he made his famous remark that he could do that too. Gardner drew a decorated map for R.H. Croll’s travel book, Wide Horizons: Wanderings in Central Australia (A&R, Sydney, 1937) and contributed to the Teague sisters’ exhibition to help raise money for the Hermannsburg water supply. Battarbee’s 1936 trip was made without Gardner, but Gardner and Croll returned to the Centre in 1938, for a time being joined by William Rowell .
Gardner left humorous pencil sketches behind at Hermannsburg in the 1930s. So did the Adelaide cartoonist John Quayle . Gardner is likely to have drawn some with the boys around their campfire. 'Cartoon-style humans and animals were copiously drawn by the children during these and later years at Hermannsburg’, e.g. pencil drawing of a cowboy [not at all cartoon-like, but straight commercial art] by anon, SAM Semmler Collection
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Born in Melbourne, John began painting in 1973. A painter of sea and land scapes, he has exhibited in the eastern states since 1976.
For many people who view a painting by John McQualter, the attraction is instant and the memory indelible. This exhibition includes fine examples of John’s trademark paintings that demonstrate his impeccable technique and instantly recognisable style.
Whether it’s a day on the beach, a game of country cricket or the machinations of an opening night crowd at an art gallery, McQualter maintains his interest in the interactions between people. Even an industrial landscape like his Westgate Moonrise suggests that we’re all there together in the peak hour rush: we all have our own agendas and our own destinations.
John has been painting full time for over thirty years and while his style has been called romantic impressionism with homage to the 19th century Australian Heidelberg School, his works also reference more contemporary mark-making and draughtsmanship.
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John Milder is a Melbourne-based sculptor who sees his craft as vital to his personal evolution towards self-realization. “When I am engaged in creating art, I feel fully alive and captivated by the unfolding revelation of the work,” he says.
He is an artist whose love of the manifestation of the three-dimensional form derives from his interest in music, philosophy and mathematics. His figures are fluid and harmonic, thought-provoking and geometrically pleasing. His patience and attention to detail comes from his father, who was a jeweller.
His background in engineering has contributed a sense of balance and structure. Working in stainless steel and bronze, he explores the fruitfulness of nature and the relations of human forms. The resultant pieces are both complex and accessible, masculine and feminine, static and dynamic.
John is largely self-taught and had his first exhibition in Melbourne in 1990, subsequently moving to New York in 1992, where he lived and exhibited until 1996, before returning to Melbourne to marry and raise a family.
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Joshua Charadia is a visual artist living and working in Sydney. In his work, Charadia casts an aesthetic and critical eye on the complex forms of Australia’s industrial landscape. He explores the nature of perception and awareness by drawing close attention to these ubiquitous yet overlooked scenes. Working from photographs, he employs the “slow” mediums of oil paint and charcoal to afford time to these images, usually seen in passing or from a distance.
Charadia received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School, Sydney in 2017. He has presented solo exhibitions in Sydney and Katoomba, and been featured in group exhibitions throughout Sydney and Melbourne. Charadia has been a finalist in numerous art prizes, including the prestigious Sulman Prize (2020) and Dobell Drawing Prize (2019). In 2020 he was awarded People’s Choice at the Adelaide Perry Prize, and in 2018 won 2nd place at the Belle ArtStart Prize. His works are held in the National Art School collection and private collections around Australia. Alongside his fine arts practice, Charadia is a published illustrator and graphic designer.
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June Bird is a Utopian artist whose style strongly reflect that of her talented and famous mother, Ada Bird Petyarre. Like Gloria Petyarre, and the famed Emily Kame Kngwarreye, June Bird began her career in 1978 in batik print-making and moved to canvas and acrylic paints in the late 1980‘s.
She uses colour brilliantly to create contrast and movement to captivate the viewer. She features in the prestigious Robert Holmes a Court Collection in Perth, and continues to feature in many important art exhibitions throughout Australia.
Born at Waite River, Northern Territory, she moved with her family to the outstation at Mulga Bore, Utopia
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Karyn Taylor manipulates light, form and shadow to challenge perception. Informed by geometric abstraction and the concepts of metaphysics (concerning the existence and nature of things) and quantum physics (concerning the behaviour of matter and energy), Karyn's works play with the invisible structures that ground our reality
Elusive polish artist graduated from the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Jarosławand the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź
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Kerry Armstrong is a Melbourne-based Abstract Expressionist. She looks to capture and document moments of raw, emotional honesty. Her paintings are episodic glimpses of her life resulting in a deeper connection to subconscious, personal matter. A physical distance and 'otherness' felt when sitting back observantly from the work initiates and connects with further dialogue.
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Kostas Dikefalos is born in Zakynthos in 1956. He enters School of Fine Arts in Athens with a scholarship, studies sculpture under Pappas and Nocolaides and finishes with honors in 1982. He then cooperates with the Goullandri and the Ethnological museums in Athens (1983-1990). Since 1992 Kostas Dikefalos teaches sculpture in the School of Fine Arts, Ioannina.
Kostas Dikefalos has been honored with many prizes in Greece and abroad. In 1996 he is awarded the first prize in the 1st International Outdoor Sculpture Contest, Kitakyushu University Japan. He has won more than 7 prizes by various municipalities of Athens.
He has participated in 13 sculpture symposiums, has conducted 15 solo exhibitions and innumerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally. His sculptures adorn many public places and art museums in Greece and Japan, as well as famous private collections.
Kostas Dikefalos lives and works in Athens. The artist has received 2 medals by the Ethnological Association of Greece, Palaia Vouli.
Carving marble and stone with immediacy and meticulous care, and more sled using bronze, Kostas Dikefals seeks t capture clear forms and creates biomorphic, geometric or aerodynamic compositions, exploiting the nature of his materials. Either sold or with apertures in pivotal points, theses compositions extend vertically or horizontally, allowing the light to trace the surfaces and highlight the volumes, which often suggest continuous movement.
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“I am a portrait artist based in New York City. I was born in Macau and received my Ph.D in Fiane Art and lectured at K.S. University in Japan. I moved to NYC in 2008, where I began studying portraiture at National Academy School of Fine Arts and The Art Students League of New York. From 2009 to 2013, I rigorously explored human anatomy in graphite charcoal and pastel.
Painting portraits is my passion. I started focusing on male figure when I moved to New York. The gay culture in NYC inspires me to work with men. My work focuses on male figures with old masters and traditional Japanese painting techniques. every portrait I paint provides me with the opportunity to create a work of art that exhibits both beauty and timelessness. I devote much time to the study of artistic techniques and expressive capabilities. I carefully study old master portrait portrait paintings on view in NYC. I meticulously examine these masterpieces, always evaluating how I can best incorporate my observations into my own work. My goal is to inspire those who see my work to look more carefully at the world around them and to discover beauty in daily life and culture.”
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A self-taught artist, Onus grew up watching his father William Onus (1906–1960) carve and paint in his Belgrave shop, where boomerangs, textiles and ceramics bearing Aboriginal designs were made and sold. As a young man, Onus met many Aboriginal artists, including landscape painters Ronald Bull (1943–1979) from Lake Tyers in Victoria and Revel Cooper (1938–1983) from Carrolup in Western Australia. Together with Albert Namatjira, these artists provided the inspiration for Onus’s emerging style.
Onus's regular spiritual pilgrimages to Arnhem Land (Maningrida) which, he later mused, gave him 'back all the stuff that colonialism had taken away.' As Neale observes, 'now, in addition to his own ancestral site at Barmah forest he was permitted to access new sites of significance such as Arafura Swamp, or his adoptive community at the outstation Garmedi; to kinship systems in which he and his family were assigned skin names; to language that he used for many of the titles of his works; to ceremony and Dreaming stories.' These trips were the catalyst for the development of a radical new painting style that united the iconography of Aboriginal and European art traditions. Onus met Murrungun/Djinang artist Jack Wunuwun and was adopted into his family. Wunuwun taught Onus law and culture and significantly gave him permission to use customary designs, including rarrk (crosshatching). Onus subsequently embarked upon his celebrated 'water and reflection' series which, rich in reflections and ambiguities, substituted the traditional European panoramic view for one described by his mentor Wunuwun as 'seeing below the surface’
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Louis Pratt is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist best known for his sculpture, painting and video works.
His work predominately focuses on big data and climate change; which he sees as the major challenges of our time.
Pratt has already achieved significant recognition as a leading Australian contemporary artist pioneering the application of new technologies to the production of sculpture. He built the first open source 3D printer in Australia in 2009, which he donated to the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.
Alongside his work with technology, Pratt casts work in coal, to explore issues around climate change. His sculptures have won numerous prestigious awards and are held in private and public collections
Luciana Smith is a Sydney based artist who studied painting at UNSW Art & Design, she has also studied photography, graphic design and film. Smith received a Bachelor of Arts/Fine Arts in 2015 and since graduating has exhibited in a number of shows and was selected as a finalist in the 2017 and 2018 Waverley Art Prize.
Working with acrylic paint on canvas and painting from photographs taken on her phone, Luciana reanimates her surroundings with bold colour as a means of examining the every day. Her most recent body of work was developed at CURA Art Lab in Santa Croce, Florence and explored how urban landscapes are shaped over time and reflect the lived experience of people.
Luke Thurgate is an artist living and working on Gadigal Land (Sydney, Australia). He teaches drawing and painting at the National Art School, where he graduated in 2021 with a Master of Fine Art. Luke has an extensive exhibition history including recent exhibitions at Grafton Regional Gallery, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Backwoods Gallery, Burra Regional Art Gallery, National Art School, and Adelaide Central Gallery. He was a finalist in the 2019 Dobell Drawing Prize, the 2020 Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Prize, and the 2022 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award.
Luke’s multi-disciplinary studio practice explores the construction and deconstruction of ‘identity’ in relation to masculinity, sexuality, romance, and power. His current work uses the monster as a surrogate ’other’ to explore tensions between parody, sincerity, menace, pathos, transgression, and vulnerability. Luke’s work borrows from a range of sources, including popular culture, Catholic iconography, and queer historical archives.
