C256/08
19 September 2008
The John Curtin Gallery presents its last exhibition for 2008, which features the works of acclaimed Australian-born artist Denise Green.
The John Curtin Gallery will showcase a collection of works by Australian-born, New York-based artist and writer Denise Green in a solo exhibition from 31 October.
Curated by Professor Ted Snell, Dean of Art at Curtin University of Technology, the Denise Green: Out West exhibition features a number of defining pieces borrowed from private Western Australian collections.
One of her works, Blue re-witnessing, which was inspired by the events of 9/11 and the collapse of New York’s World Trade Centre will feature in the exhibition.
The collection also includes paintings and drawings created during the 80’s and 90’s and now held in the collections of Western Australian institutions and private individuals.
Contributors include the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Kerry Stokes Collection and former Deputy Director of the Art Gallery of WA, John Stringer’s personal collection.
Stringer championed Green on his return to Australia in the late eighties and encouraged Australian collectors to invest in her work. He also purchased many of Green’s pieces for the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Kerry Stokes collection.
Famous New York based art critic Suzi Gablick said of Green’s work; “Resisting all party lines and drawing on a wide range of sources Denise Green constructs her own model of multicultural influence, blurring and smudging as many boundaries as she can along the way”.
An Australian artist who has lived in New York since the early seventies, Green has taken an interest in non-western modes of thought and has been influenced by the art of Asia and the Indigenous art of Australia.
Curtin Dean of Art, Professor Ted Snell, said the increasing globalisation of the cultural environment has been documented in her practice and in her writings as she examines the multiple ways in which artists have embraced non western traditions and philosophy.
“Denise Green is an artist who draws from the all the influences around her and re-presents them to us with great finesse and to open up new interpretations and possibilities.” Professor Snell said.
Born in Melbourne in 1946, Denise Green spent her formative years in Paris during the 60s and moved to the US in 1969. She completed her Masters of Fine Arts in New York in the 70s and was exposed and influenced by indigenous artists during frequent visits to Australia.
She collaborated as editor of Semiotext(e), an independent publishing house based at the Columbia University and wrote for numerous art publications in the US and Australia.
She travelled to Asia extensively in the 1980s and lived in India, where she became acquainted with the intellectual writings of poet and linguist A.K. Ramanujan. She also spent time in Italy and New York.
In the 90s she joined the graduate faculty at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Over the past eight years she has held numerous retrospective and survey exhibitions and her writing has been published in Australia and Europe.
Denise Green Out West will be open to the public from 31 October to 5 December and entry is free. The Gallery is open between 12pm and 5pm, Monday to Friday and will also be open for its Sunday@Curtin event between 1pm and 4pm on Sunday 30 November 2008.
Modified: 19 September 2008
