Elizabeth Gower

Last updated

Elizabeth Gower (born 1952) is an Australian abstract artist who lives and works in Melbourne. She is best known for her work in paper and mixed-media monochrome and coloured collages, drawn from her sustained practice of collecting urban detritus.

Contents

Early life and education

Gower was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1952. [1] In 1973 she completed a Diploma of Art and Design at Prahran College of Advanced Education, Melbourne. She also holds a Diploma of Education, Melbourne Teachers College (1974), a Master of Arts, RMIT University, Melbourne (1995) and a PhD from Monash University, Melbourne (2014). [2]

Teaching

Gower has held teaching positions at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts and is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne. [3] Throughout this academic career, Gower has curated exhibitions and research projects and authored essays and catalogues. [2] These projects build on her professional and creative interests, and often bring together groups of emerging and established artists. [4] AustralianArts Review argues that her teaching and art have influenced many of Melbourne's emerging artists. [5]

Artistic practice

Gower has been exhibiting since 1975 [6] and is represented by Sutton Gallery in Melbourne [7] and Milani Gallery in Brisbane. [8] Her work developed as a young artist during the 1970s feminist movement, [9] and with her involvement with groups such as the Women's Art Movement, the Women's Art Register and the Lip Collective. Her use of collages and wall hangings in largely abstract compositions deploys domestic materials such as newspaper and tissue paper, as well as textiles and craft techniques. [10] Curator Lisa Sullivan states that Gower's work elevates forms and practises derisively considered ‘women’s work’ to the status of art. [6]

Collecting ephemera, discarded printed material and paper cuttings is also integral to Gower's critique of consumerism and waste. Gower uses graphic design elements and repetition of cut out pictures of spectacles, shoes, tea-bag labels or stickers from fruit, to create decorative and optical effects, often on transparent paper. Other works explore multiple images of fish, crabs and other crustaceans, fruit and vegetables, grasses, beetles, butterflies, flowers, insects, snakes and frogs. [11]

In 2005, artist Kate Just outlined substantial changes in Gower's practice in a review in Eyeline journal: "In recent years, however, Gower’s collecting has eschewed the material world in favour of more evocative things: meaningful events, conversations and places that have marked the world at large. After September 11, Gower compiled lists of significant attacks, invasions, battles, or conflicts which took place in the modern world between September 11, 1901 and September 11, 2001 and presented them on long sheets of drafting film." [12]

The Geelong Art Gallery hosted a major survey of Gower's work in 2018, Cuttings- Elizabeth Gower, which covered significant bodies of work from early 2000 onwards. [13] [5]

Residencies and awards

Gower has been awarded numerous awards and residencies throughout her long career: The Lynch Prize for Painting, Toorak Art Gallery (1973), [14] Georges Art Prize (1978), [14] Alliance Francaise Art Fellowship (1980), [14] Mornington Drawing Prize in 1995, [14] Fellowship grant, Australia Council, Visual Arts/Crafts Board (2002) and an Australian Postgraduate Award (2006). [14] She has travelled extensively and completed a number of prestigious international residencies including the Australia Council, Visual Arts/Crafts Board, Green Street Studio, NYC (2008), the Art Gallery of New South Wales Denise Hickey studio, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2007), the Australia Council Visual Arts/Crafts Board, Barcelona Studio (2000), the Australia Council Visual Arts/Crafts Board, Paretaio Studio, Italy (1983), Point B Residency, NYC (2014), and the Institut für alles Mögliche studio in Wedding, Berlin (2019). [15] [16] [2]

Exhibitions

Solo

Gower's first major solo exhibition was held in 1975 at George Paton Gallery, Melbourne. [17] Since then she has held many regular solo exhibitions in private and state galleries in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra and in regional Australian galleries. Internationally, her work has been shown in New York, London, Paris and the United Arab Emirates. [2] [18]

Her series of Cuttings exhibitions were of discarded materials or ephemera found and re-purposed into artworks during her residencies: Cuttings (from Barcelona) Sutton Gallery, Melbourne and Bellas Gallery, Brisbane 2001; Cuttings (from St.Kilda) Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2004; Cuttings (from Paris) [19] Sutton Project Space, Melbourne, 2008 and Cuttings (from New York) Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2010. [20] The Cuttings series culminated in a survey exhibition in 2018, Cuttings- Elizabeth Gower at the Geelong Art Gallery. [21]

Other survey exhibitions have included Chance or Design and Beyond the Everyday touring Victoria in 1995–96 and 2002–03, [18] Conversations 1955 - 2005 and Sites 1980 - 2005 Victorian College of the Arts Gallery, Melbourne 2005, [12] Beyond the everyday: The art of Elizabeth Gower 1974 - 2002 Glen Eira City Gallery, Melbourne 2002 [22] and Mildura Arts Centre, Hamilton Art Gallery and Wangaratta Exhibition Gallery, 2003, Line of Thought 1975-2002 and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman 1974 - 2002 Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2002. [2]

Group

Since the 70s, Gower has showed regularly in group exhibitions, especially those about feminist, abstract or collage art. [23] Some significant group exhibitions have included Treasures of a Decade, 1968-1978 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1978, Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney 1979, Fieldwork Australian Art 1968-2002  Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria 2002, [24] Imaging the apple, various galleries, Sydney, Melbourne, regional areas, New York, 2004–5, 2010, [25] [26] Cut with a knife touring Melbourne and regional galleries 2012–13, Howard Arkley (and friends), Tarra Warra Museum of Art, Victoria, 2015, [27] Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, 2013, [18] Abstraction: celebrating Australian women abstract artists, from the National Gallery of Australia collection touring to regional galleries 2017, [28] and Unfinished Business: perspectives on feminism and art,  Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 2018. [29] In 2024 her early abstract work was exhibited in Radical: Australian Abstract Art of the 70s and 80s at the Warrnambool Art Gallery. [30]

Public commissions

Gower has also been commissioned to produce several public artworks such as banners, light boxes, facades, floor and wall murals. The Lost and Found floor mural in the arena foyer at Sydney Olympic Park (formerly Sydney Super Dome now Qudos Bank Arena) features broken line drawings of athletes and sporting motifs. [31]

Personal life

She was first married to Howard Arkley (1973-1980?) [32] then John R Neeson (1984- ). Gower and Neeson collaborate as artists and co-curators as well as producing individual work. [33]

Related Research Articles

Janet Dawson MBE is an Australian artist who was a pioneer of abstract painting in Australia in the 1960s, having been introduced to abstraction during studies in England while she lived in Europe 1957–1960 She was also an accomplished lithographic printer of her own works as well as those of other renowned Australian artists, a theatre-set and furniture designer. She studied in England and Italy on scholarships before returning to Australia in 1960. She won the Art Gallery of New South Wales Archibald Prize in 1973 with the portrait of her husband, Michael Boddy Reading. She has exhibited across Australia and overseas, and her work is held in major Australian and English collections. In 1977 she was awarded an MBE for services to art.

Howard Arkley was an Australian artist, born in Melbourne, known for his airbrushed paintings of houses, architecture, and suburbia. His parents were Australian and had British ancestry.

Vivienne Joyce Binns is an Australian artist known for her contribution to the Women's Art Movement in Australia, her engagement with feminism in her artwork, and her active advocacy within community arts. She works predominantly in painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gareth Sansom</span>

Gareth Sansom is an Australian artist, painter, printmaker and collagist and winner of the 2008 John McCaughey Memorial Prize of $100,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pamela Irving</span> Australian sculptor (born 1960)

Pamela Irving is an Australian visual artist specialising in bronze, ceramic and mosaic sculptures as well as printmaking and copper etchings. In addition to her extensive art work, Irving has lectured in art and ceramics at Monash University, the Melbourne College of Advanced Education, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and the Chisholm Institute of Technology. She also worked as an art critic for the Geelong Advertiser and was a councillor on the Craft Council of Victoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RMIT Gallery</span>

RMIT Gallery is an Australian public art gallery located in Melbourne, Victoria. It is the main art gallery of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

Robert Rooney (1937–2017) was an artist and art critic from Melbourne, Australia, and a leading figure in Australian Conceptual art.

Juan Davila is a Chilean-Australian artist and writer who migrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1974. He is represented in major collections throughout Australia, as well as New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Tate (London) and the Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo in Spain. His works are often controversial, and in 2019 the Australian Christian Lobby called for one of his pictures to be removed from Griffith University Art Museum in Brisbane, which was part of an exhibition called The Abyss. The artwork Holy Family, depicts Mary cradling a giant penis, in the style of the famous Michelangelo sculpture The Pieta.

Ruth Maddison is an Australian photographer. She started photography in the 1970s and continues to make contributions to the Australian visual arts community.

Aida Tomescu is an Australian contemporary artist who is known for her abstract paintings, collages, drawings and prints. Tomescu is a winner of the Dobell Prize for Drawing, the Wynne Prize for Landscape and the Sir John Sulman Prize, by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Ponch Hawkes is an Australian photographer whose work explores intergenerational relationships, queer identity and LGBTQI+ rights, the female body, masculinity, and women at work, capturing key moments in Australia's cultural and social histories.

Patricia Larter (1936–1996) was an Australian artist who worked across mail art, video, photography, performance and painting. She was "one of the leading figures in the movement known as 'international mail art'". She is credited with coining the term "femail art" that was taken up by other mail artists around the world.

Kate Beynon is an Australian contemporary artist based in Melbourne.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judy Watson</span> Australian artist

Judy Watson is an Australian Waanyi multi-media artist who works in print-making, painting, video and installation. Her work often examines Indigenous Australian histories, and she has received a number of high profile commissions for public spaces.

Raquel Ormella is an Australian artist focusing on multimedia works such as posters, banners, videography and needlework. Ormella’s work has been showcased in many exhibitions in galleries and museums, including the Shepparton Art Museum and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Working in Sydney and Canberra, Ormella’s pieces are known to encompass themes of activism and social issues in many forms and has received praise.

Stephen Wickham is an Australian photographer, painter and printmaker.

Rosslynd Piggott is a contemporary Australian installation artist and painter. Piggott's foundations for art making are in painting but have evolved to include drawing, photography, textiles, video, installation and sculpture throughout her career. Piggott's art includes symbolist and surrealist themes where "she explores a dream-like state, where the process is open-ended – part of a continuum – and the notion of the uncanny is a constant companion."

Jacky Redgate is an Australian-based artist who works as a sculptor, an installation artist, and photographer. Her work has been recognised in major solo exhibitions surveying her work has been included in many group exhibitions in Australia, Japan and England. Her works are included in major Australian galleries including the National Gallery and key state galleries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Ogilvie</span> Australian artist (1902–1993)

Helen Elizabeth Ogilvie was a twentieth-century Australian artist and gallery director, cartoonist, painter, printmaker and craftworker, best known for her early linocuts and woodcuts, and her later oil paintings of vernacular colonial buildings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Cattapan</span> Australian visual artist

Jon Cattapan is an Australian visual artist best known for his abstract oil paintings of cityscapes, his service as the 63rd Australian war artist and his work as a professor of visual art at the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the Victorian College of the Arts. Cattapan's artworks are held in several major galleries and collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Australia.

References

  1. ↑ 150 Victorian women artists. Melbourne: Women 150. 1985. ISBN   0-9589286-0-6. OCLC   13214779.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Gower, Elizabeth. "Elizabeth Gower CV" elizabethgower.com. Retrieved 8 March 2020
  3. ↑ "Dr Elizabeth Gower". findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  4. ↑ "Elizabeth Gower". Art, Design and Architecture. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  5. 1 2 "Cuttings – Elizabeth Gower". Australian Arts Review. 30 August 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  6. 1 2 "Elizabeth Gower". Sutton Gallery. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  7. ↑ "Sutton Gallery". Sutton Gallery. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  8. ↑ "Artists". Milani Gallery. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  9. ↑ "Elizabeth Gower: He loves me he loves me not". Artlink Magazine. Archived from the original on 8 March 2020. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  10. ↑ "Elizabeth Gower". Sutton Gallery. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  11. ↑ "Elizabeth Gower :: biography at :: at Design and Art Australia Online". www.daao.org.au.
  12. 1 2 "Elizabeth Gower". eyeline contemporary art magazine australia. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  13. ↑ "Cuttings—Elizabeth Gower catalogue". Geelong Gallery. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 "Elizabeth Gower | Milani Gallery". milanigallery.com.au. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  15. ↑ "Elizabeth Gower". NETS Victoria. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  16. ↑ "Elizabeth Gower | Milani Gallery". milanigallery.com.au. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  17. ↑ When you think about art-- : the Ewing and George Paton Galleries, 1971-2008. Helen Vivian, George Paton Gallery, Ewing Gallery. Melbourne, Vic.: Macmillan Art Pub. 2008. ISBN   978-1-921394-02-7. OCLC   271749145.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  18. 1 2 3 "Melbourne Now". www.ngv.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  19. ↑ Whiteley, Gillian (2010). Junk: Art and the Politics of Trash. UK: Bloomsbury/I.B. Taurus imprint. pp. Fig. 25. ISBN   9781848854130.
  20. ↑ Feagins, Lucy (2012). "Elizabeth Gower". The Design Files. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  21. ↑ "Cuttings – Elizabeth Gower". Australian Arts Review. 30 August 2018. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  22. ↑ Burke, Janine; Williams, Linda (2002). Beyond the everyday: the art of Elizabeth Gower: a Glen Eira City Council exhibition. Glen Eira: Glen Eira City Council. ISBN   1876832908.
  23. ↑ "Elizabeth Gower | Milani Gallery". milanigallery.com.au. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  24. ↑ "Fieldwork". Artlink Magazine. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  25. ↑ "News | The University of Sydney". www.sydney.edu.au. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  26. ↑ "Imaging The Apple | Acinstitute" . Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  27. ↑ "Howard Arkley (and friends…)". TarraWarra Museum of Art. 21 August 2015. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  28. ↑ "Abstraction: celebrating Australian women abstract artists". nga.gov.au. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  29. ↑ "Australian Centre for Contemporary Art". acca.melbourne. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  30. ↑ Paatsch, Loqui (9 March 2024). "Radical: Australian Abstract Art of the 70s and 80s". Memo Review.
  31. ↑ "Public art - Sydney Olympic Park/Public art pdf". www.sydneyolympicpark.com.au. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  32. ↑ "Howard Arkley Education Resource", National Gallery of Victoria. Retrieved 8 March 2020
  33. ↑ Dooney, Michael (13 October 2019), "Interview with artist John R Neeson". Subtext and discourse. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.