Gary Dufour

Last updated • 4 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Gary Dufour
Born1954 (1954)
Tisdale, Saskatchewan
EducationFine Art, BFA (Distinction), University of Regina; Fine Art (grad. 1976); MFA, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (grad. 1979);
Known forCurator of Contemporary Art, educator
Spousespouse of Siné MacPherson (b. 1952) (m. 1976)

Gary Dufour (born 1954) is an art historian based in Australia who has taught at the University of Western Australia. He served as the senior curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery (1988–1995) and as chief curator and deputy director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia (1995–2013). He is an expert on contemporary and modern art and, in 2016, was appointed as an approved valuer for the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.

Contents

Career

Dufour was born in Tisdale, Saskatchewan. [1] He received his BFA in Fine Art from the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, graduating in 1976, and his MFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD) in Halifax, graduating in 1979. [2] In 1976 and 1977, he was the Founding Director of the Saskatchewan Craft Council in Regina. [2] In 1980, he was a lecturer at NSCAD, and from 1981 to 1983, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Regina. [2]

During the early 1980s, he worked as a sculptor. Curator Michael Parke-Taylor did an exhibition of his work titled Gary Dufour: Belie/F for the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina in 1981 [3] (it was reviewed at length in the Regina newspaper) [4] and he had a show of his constructions at Mercer Union in Toronto in 1982. [5] His artwork is now in the collections of Remai Modern, Saskatoon, and the University of Regina. [6]

He moved to Australia in 1983 and became the Curator of Prints & Drawings at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) in Perth. [2] From 1987 to 1988, he was Chief Curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, then from 1988 to 1995, he was Senior Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. [2] While there, one of his major achievements was a Guido Molinari exhibition in 1989 which he curated and for which he wrote the catalogue, titled Guido Molinari: 1951-1961, Peintures en noir et blanc/ The Black and White Paintings which toured the country. [7] He also organized an exhibition and wrote the catalogue essay for Gerald Ferguson's The Initial Alphabet (1994) [8] as well as being the Foundation curator, Vancouver Art Gallery Archive of Lawrence Weiner Posters. [2]

Afterwards, from 1995 to 2013, he served as Chief Curator | Deputy Director at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. [2] In 1997, he co-curated an exhibition of Allan Sekula for the Vancouver Art Gallery. [9] In 2007, he was the first curator-in-residence ISCP, New York for the Dr. K. David Edwards and Margery Edwards Charitable Trust. [10] From 2013 to 2020, he taught Art History at the University of Western Australia [11] and from 2013 to 2018, he directed the Cruthers Art Foundation [2] (the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art (CCWA) is Australia's largest public collection of women's art). [2] In 2016, he was appointed an approved valuer for the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. [2] From 2017 to 2018, he was Director of the SHEILA A Foundation for Women in Visual Art in Australia and retired as Emeritus Director. [2]

Dufour has developed extensive contemporary international art collections and commissioned artists such as Christian Boltanski. [2] His Fonds is held at the National Art Archive and Capon Research Library, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and in the "Papers of Howard Taylor" at the Archives and Research Library, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. [2]

Writing

Dufour edited the State art collection : Art Gallery of Western Australia (1997). [12] He has organized and contributed essays to exhibitions on the art of Canadian, Australian, and International modern and contemporary artists such as Howard Taylor (1985, 1998, 2003), Dan Graham (1985), Max Pam (1986), Frank Nulf (1987), Guido Molinari (1989 and often thereafter), Gerald Ferguson (1994), Jochen Gerz (1994), and most famously, Jeff Wall (1990 and 2012), [2] among others. (Dufour also edited Wall's Catalogue Raisonné: 2005-2021, called a "lavish presentation" by Goodreads). [13] In 2014, he curated the exhibition, wrote the brochure and gave a floor talk for William Kentridge's the REfusal of Time (2012), a video and sculptural installation at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. [14] [15]

He has written extensively on Guido Molinari for Heffel Fine Art Auction House Contemporary Art catalogues in Canada since 2017 [16] and most recently on Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland (2024). [17] In 2023 he edited Max Pam; Contingency of Eye Contact A Memoir 1970-1975 published by Editions Bessard, Paris. [18] In 2024, his transcription of Howard Taylor's Journal 1946-2001 which traces his material innovation as a painter will be published by the AGWA. [2]

Related Research Articles

Guido Molinari L.L. D. was a Canadian artist, known internationally for his serial abstract paintings and their dynamic interplay of colours and focus on modular shapes, and lines. His Stripe series is especially celebrated. Molinari himself described their effect - and the effect of all his paintings - as creating a new kind of fictional space "because it happens in the mind and yet also involves the totality of perception".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Gallery of Western Australia</span> Public art gallery in Perth, Western Australia

The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is a public art gallery that is part of the Perth Cultural Centre, in Perth. It is located near the Western Australian Museum and State Library of Western Australia and is supported and managed by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries of the Government of Western Australia. The current gallery main building opened in 1979. It is linked to the old court house – The Centenary Galleries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heffel Gallery</span> Canadian fine art auction house

Heffel Fine Art Auction House is a division of Heffel Gallery Limited. Heffel maintains offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

Max Pam is an Australian photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. J. Hughes</span> Canadian painter

Edward John Hughes was a Canadian painter, known for his images of the land and sea in British Columbia.

Gerald Ferguson was a conceptual artist and painter who lived and taught in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Born in Cincinnati he was both a Canadian and US citizen. After receiving his MFA from Ohio University Ferguson taught at two institutions before coming to Canada in 1968, invited to teach at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in Halifax. He continued to teach at NSCAD until his retirement in 2006.

Sir James Winter Cruthers was an Australian media business executive and philanthropist.

Dennis Richard Reid D.F.A. was a Canadian curator and art historian whose exhibitions and catalogues were praised by peers as "impressive" and scholarship "coherent" and "commendable".

Alison Baily Rehfisch was an Australian painter born in Sydney.

Ella Fry (1916–1997) was an artist, musician, and chairperson of the Western Australian Art Gallery, in Perth, Western Australia from 1976 to 1986.

Lillian Irene Hoffar Reid was a Canadian painter. She was in the first graduating class, June 1929, at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art. She taught at the Vancouver School of Art from 1933 to 1937.

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.

Jillian Frances Green is an Australian artist, whose work references Christian art, particularly illuminated manuscripts and Russian iconography. Her studies and work reflect this continuing interest in philosophical and theological writings. She sees the detailed beautification of sacred texts as an act of meditative worship, and her work is that act, too.

Lesbia Thorpe (1919–2009) was an Australian artist, possibly best known for her printmaking.

Miriam Stannage (1939–2016) was an Australian conceptual artist. She was known for her work in painting, printmaking and photography, and participated in many group and solo exhibitions, receiving several awards over her career. Her work was also featured in two Biennales and two major retrospective exhibitions.

Cruthers Collection of Women's Art is a collection of more than 700 artworks by Australian women, held at the University of Western Australia. It is the only public collection focused on women's art in Australia.

Cristina Asquith Baker (1868–1960) was an Australian artist known for her paintings and lithographs. She studied with Frederick McCubbin, one of the key artists of the Australian impressionist Heidelberg school, but she was independent and did not tie herself to a single school of thought. She twice studied abroad, in Paris and London, gaining expertise in various other forms of artistic expression such as lithography and carpet-making.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn is a Laotian-born Australian visual artist. She immigrated with her parents as a seven-year old, and through studies and travel has integrated Laotian, Vietnamese and Australian influences in her art. Her art reflects cross-cultural influences in contemporary Australia as she fuses her personal experiences, dual cultures, and painterly abstraction. She has exhibited widely in Australia and Singapore, and her works are held in major state and regional galleries across Australia. She was a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize 2016 and the Moet & Chandon art prize in 1998. She lives and works in Canberra.

<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.

Eveline Kotai is an Australian artist. Kotai is known for her idiosyncratic stitched collages, which involves the artist cutting up her paintings into thin strips and reconfiguring them across a surface with the use of a sewing machine and invisible thread.

References

  1. ↑ "Gary Dufour". viaf.org. VIAF. Retrieved 14 May 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 "Faculty". research-repository.uwa.edu.au. UWA. Retrieved 14 May 2024.
  3. ↑ "Exhibitions" (PDF). www.erudit.org. Erudit. Retrieved 19 May 2024.
  4. ↑ Dean Hoffart, "Stacks of tiles are presented as work of art". The Leader-Post, Regina, July 4, 1981.
  5. ↑ "Exhibitions". Mercer Union, 1982. Retrieved 19 May 2024.
  6. ↑ "Collection". www.daao.org.au. Design and Art Australia Online. Retrieved 19 May 2024.
  7. ↑ "Artists". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
  8. ↑ Gerald Ferguson: The Initial Alphabet. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery. 1994. ISBN   1895442192 . Retrieved 20 May 2024.
  9. ↑ Sekula, Allan; Dufour, Gary; O'Brian, John (1997). Geography lesson: Canadian notes. Vancouver, Canada, Cambridge, Mass.: : Vancouver Art Gallery; MIT Press. ISBN   0262692007 . Retrieved 21 May 2024.
  10. ↑ "Awards". research-repository.uwa.edu.au. Dr. K. David Edwards and Margery Edwards Charitable Trust. Retrieved 19 May 2024.
  11. ↑ "Biography". www.daao.org.au. Design and Art Australia Online (DAAO). Retrieved 17 May 2024.
  12. ↑ State art collection : Art Gallery of Western Australia / [editor, Gary Dufour]. Perth: Art Gallery of Western Australia. 1997. ISBN   0730936155 . Retrieved 18 May 2024.
  13. ↑ "article". www.goodreads.com. Goodreads. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
  14. ↑ "Exhibitions". pica.org.au. PICA. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
  15. ↑ "Exhibition". research-repository.uwa.edu.au. UWA. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
  16. ↑ "Works". www.heffel.com. Heffel Auction House. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
  17. ↑ "Exhibitions". www.heffel.com. Heffel Auction House. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
  18. ↑ Books. Paris: Editions Bessard. 2023. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
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.