David Art Wales (born 6 February 1964, Sydney) is an Australian entrepreneur and artist best known for creating satirical cult figure Guru Adrian. [1] He has been involved in collaborations with artist Keith Haring and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. [2]
Wales has been called "the father of the Naughties" [3] in relation to his role as founder of Project Naughtie, a campaign to name the decade of 2000–2009 the "Naughties". [4]
At the age of nineteen, Wales launched his first business, Nice Enterprises, [5] described as "the world's first mail order flattery service." A year later, he co-published Fatplastiscene magazine, the first issue of which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. [6] In 1986 Wales became a host of the ABC TV show Edge of the Wedge. [7]
During the 1980s he was a frequent contributor to Australian radio station Triple J, providing commentary on pop-cultural issues, including a live report from Berlin as the Berlin Wall fell, and a comic strip featuring Guru Adrian for the station's fanzine, Alan.
In New York in 1987, Wales collaborated with artist Keith Haring on a piece called No Body. In 2020 he told the South Sydney Herald, [8] "My Guru Adrian character had no body, just a head, so Keith drew him a body."
Wales moved to New York to paint in 1989 and spent the 1990s showing at various Manhattan and Australian galleries, including Roslyn Oxley 9 and the Australian Consulate-General in New York. [9] [10] During this time he also worked on content creation projects for MTV, Fox and Disney. During the 90s Hanna Barbera, Fox and MTV have all optioned Guru Adrian character with a view to creating a TV series, but each time the project was shelved. [11]
In 1998 Wales and Australian dancer Catherine Hourihan launched the Red Vixen Burlesque, [12] a popular downtown off-Broadway attraction now seen as an early progenitor of the neo-burlesque movement. [13]
In 1999 Wales initiated Project Naughtie, [4] a grassroots campaign to name the 2000s decade the "Naughties". [14] [15] A December 2009 newspaper article referred to Wales as the "father of the Noughties". [3]
That year Wales became Cultural Forecaster for Toyota, [16] tracking and predicting trends for the automaker's design division. [17] In 2000 he launched the creative consultancy Ministry of Culture. [18]
In 2008, Wales and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock launched the B2B website Cinelan, described by The Hollywood Reporter as a "film content publisher." [19]
More recently, Ministry of Culture has created a viral campaign claiming to resurrect an ancient Welsh temperance movement called Prudent Boozers. [20] [21] [22]
After relocating from New York to Sydney, Australia in 2018, Wales created a series of 200 prints on acoustic felt that documented how he felt about returning home after three decades. The resulting show, How I Felt, [23] was well received, with art critic Andrew Frost writing, "Wales has a pure pop sensibility. He uses the iconography of popular culture in a way that’s affectionate and nostalgic, but also as a way to create a reflection of his own doubts and uncertainty."
In 2019, Wales created BuyMyLife, [24] a digital art project devised as a way to sell his life in New York City. For US$11,000 anyone could buy a package consisting of the lease to the artist's Manhattan apartment, [25] his furniture, art materials, clothing, books, art collection, and entree to his social group – specifically, lunch with three of Wales's closest friends at Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop, [26] where he frequently ate. The BuyMyLife site [24] describes the package as "a piece of art you can live in" and "a set of tools that will give you a 30-year head start on becoming a New Yorker," with potential buyers being "anyone who loves the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History and longs to live in one." BuyMyLife sold in early 2021.
Wales spent the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown in Sydney creating 100 prints on acoustic felt for a show called Going Viral, at Duckrabbit art space. The works depict the Covid-19 molecule as an invading alien or exotic plant. [8] Since galleries were closed during lockdown, Wales hung the show in the gallery's street-facing window and held a socially-distant opening, with attendees wearing pool noodles under their arms to keep them 1.5 metres apart. [27] Going Viral prompted a Sydney newspaper to dub Wales "the Warhol of Darlo" (Darlo is short for Darlinghurst, [28] the Sydney suburb where Wales lives and works). The artist described the Going Viral prints as "positive mementos of a dark period in history that we’ve weathered together."
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, it was established in 1967 by the Australian Government as a national public art museum. As of 2022 it is under the directorship of Nick Mitzevich.
Brett Whiteley AO was an Australian artist. He is represented in the collections of all the large Australian galleries, and was twice winner of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes. He held many exhibitions, and lived and painted in Australia as well as Italy, England, Fiji and the United States.
John Henry Olsen AO OBE was an Australian artist and winner of the 2005 Archibald Prize. Olsen's primary subject of work was landscape.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most important public gallery in Sydney and one of the largest in Australia.
Emily Kame Kngwarreye was an Aboriginal Australian artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. After only starting painting as a septuagenarian, Kngwarreye became one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of Indigenous Australian art. She was a founding member of the Utopia Women's Batik Group and is known for her precise and detailed works.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), formerly the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, is located on George Street in The Rocks neighbourhood of Sydney. The museum is housed in the Stripped Classical/Art Deco-styled former Maritime Services Board (MSB) building on the western side of Circular Quay. A modern wing was added in 2012.
Ben Quilty is an Australian artist and social commentator, who has won a series of painting prizes: the 2014 Prudential Eye Award, 2011 Archibald Prize, and 2009 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. He has been described as one of Australia's most famous living artists.
Vexta is an Australian stencil artist and street artist from Melbourne, Victoria.
Michael Riley was an Aboriginal Australian photographer and filmmaker, and co-founder of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative. A significant figure in contemporary Indigenous Australian art, Riley's work is held by many public art institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia.
Gareth Sansom is an Australian artist, painter, printmaker and collagist and winner of the 2008 John McCaughey Memorial Prize of $100,000.
Adrian George Feint was an Australian artist. He worked in various media, and is noted for his bookplate designs.
Jenny Margaret Kee, is an Australian fashion designer.
The Golden Fleece, originally known as Shearing at Newstead, is an 1894 painting by the Australian artist Tom Roberts. The painting depicts sheep shearers plying their trade in a timber shearing shed at Newstead North, a sheep station near Inverell on the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales. The same shed is depicted in another of Roberts' works, Shearing Shed, Newstead (1894).
Tracey Moffatt is an Indigenous Australian artist who primarily uses photography and video.
Jean Bellette was an Australian artist. Born in Tasmania, she was educated in Hobart and at Julian Ashton's art school in Sydney, where one of her teachers was Thea Proctor. In London she studied under painters Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler.
Howard Hinton was an Australian art patron and benefactor. A thwarted artist due to shortsightedness, he visited many of the great galleries of Europe in his youth. At age 24 he migrated to Australia and quickly associated with leading artists of the Heidelberg School and the bohemian artists' camps around Sydney Harbour in the 1890s. He built a successful career in shipping and, along with a family inheritance, used his moderate wealth to support waves of Australian artists in the first half of the twentieth century. Through extensive donations to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and particularly the Armidale Teachers' College he became one of the greatest benefactors in Australian art history.
Lindy Lee is an Australian painter and sculptor of Chinese heritage, whose work blends the cultures of Australia and her ancestral China and explores her Buddhist faith. She has exhibited widely, and is particularly known for her large works of public art, such as several iterations of The Life of Stars at various locations in China and on the forecourt of the Art Gallery of South Australia, and The Garden of Cloud and Stone in Sydney's Chinatown district.
Mark Titmarsh is a contemporary Australian painter. His work involves permutations of painting, sculpture, installation, screen media, performance and writing. In 2017, he published a book called Expanded Painting.
Barbara Mbitjana Moore is an Anmatyerre woman who grew up in Ti-Tree in the Northern Territory, moving later to Amata in South Australia's Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. In April 2003, Moore began painting at Amata's Tjala Arts, and, since then, has received widespread recognition. Moore won a National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2012 and has been a finalist in many other years. Moore has also been a finalist for the Wynne Prize.
Nyapanyapa Yunupingu was an Australian Yolngu painter and printmaker who lived and worked in the community at Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. Yunupingu created works of art that drastically diverge from the customs of the Yolngu people and made waves within the art world as a result. Due to this departure from tradition within her oeuvre, Yunupingu's work had varying receptions from within her community and the broader art world.
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