Joan Grounds

Last updated

Joan Grounds (Dickson)
Born31 August 1939
EducationBachelor of Arts (Tulane University)
Master of Arts (University of California)
Known forSculpture, ceramics, performance art, film
MovementMulti disciplinary

Joan Grounds (born 31 August 1939) [1] is an American-born artist. She has been exhibiting in Australia and internationally from 1967. Her solo and collaborative art work is held in the National Gallery of Australia (ceramics), the National Gallery of Victoria ( both film and ceramics) and in the Powerhouse Museum of Arts and Applied Sciences (ceramics). Her hybrid practice incorporated ceramics, sculpture, sound art, film and performance art.

Contents

Early life and education

Grounds was born in Atlanta, United States, in 1939. She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tulane University in 1962 and a Master of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. [2] [3]

After meeting and marrying American/Australian artist Marr Grounds, she lived in Ghana for two years while he lectured in architecture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. [3]

She exhibited in Ghana and the US before coming to Australia[ citation needed ] in 1968. [3]

Career

Grounds's first major installation work was a fire sculpture on a beach in Ghana in 1968, later repeated on deserted beaches in New South Wales. [2] She would continue to engage with nature in later site-specific installation work, including the "Four Quartets" in 1987-1988.

Grounds was the director of the Tin Sheds at Sydney University from 1976 to 1979, after co-founding the art workshop with her husband and Donald Brook. Grounds fostered the Tin Sheds as a vibrant hub for a diversity of politically active artists, students and the broader community and it supported many sub-groups. [3] [4] [5]

She taught at East Sydney Technical College [6] (later the National Art School) at that time, and later taught at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW.[ citation needed ]

Art practice

The Watter Gallery in Sydney has represented her work. [6]

Collaborations

Grounds collaborated with Aleks Danko on several performance and film projects and had a ten-year collaboration with Sherre Delys, producing sound sculpture and public art installation. Other collaborators were N.S. Harsha, Rik Rue, Margaret Dodd, Stevie Wishhart, and Jane Finlay.[ citation needed ]

Themes

"Joan Grounds' work...engages with nature, with the placement of women, with the body of women, with memory and with ways of exploring all of these." (Julie Ewington, 2001) [7]

"The installations are as formal and elusive as music. And you are the music while the music lasts." (George Alexander, 1989) [8]

Recognition

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Others

Collections

Related Research Articles

Deborah Halpern is an Australian sculptor, mosaic artist and ceramic artist, notable for her public artworks in Melbourne.

Fiona Margaret Hall, AO is an Australian artistic photographer and sculptor. Hall represented Australia in the 56th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2015. She is known as "one of Australia's most consistently innovative contemporary artists." Many of her works explore the "intersection of environment, politics and exploitation".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Smith (art historian)</span> Australian art historian, critic and academic (1916–2011)

Bernard William Smith was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic, considered the founding father of Australian art history, and one of the country's most important thinkers. His book Place, Taste and Tradition: a Study of Australian Art Since 1788 is a key text in Australian art history, and influence on Robert Hughes. Smith was associated with the Communist Party of Australia, and after leaving the party remained a prominent left-wing intellectual and Marxist thinker. Following the death of his wife in 1989, he sold much of their art collection to establish the Kate Challis RAKA, one of the first prizes in the country for Indigenous artists and writers.

Mike Parr is an Australian performance artist and printmaker and Painter. Parr's works have been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including in Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellen José</span> Australian photographer (1951–2017)

Ellen José (1951 – 2 June 2017) was an Australian Indigenous artist, photographer and anarchist. She was a Torres Strait Islander descendant from Murray, Darnley and Horn Islands who lived in Melbourne with husband and fellow anarchist Joseph Toscano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Sleeth (visual artist)</span> Australian artist

Matthew Sleeth is an Australian visual artist and filmmaker. His often collaborative practice incorporates photography, film, sculpture and installation with a particular focus on the aesthetic and conceptual concerns of new media. The performative and photographic nature of media art is regularly highlighted in his work.

Diane Mantzaris is an Australian artist known for her pioneering application of digital imaging to printmaking and for her unconventional approach to image making, which is often both personal and political in content. Mantzaris pioneered the use of computers as a printmaking and art-making tool in the early to mid-1980s, exhibiting widely, nationally and throughout Asia in touring exhibitions, to considerable acclaim. Her practice now crosses into several fields associated with the visual arts, printmaking, drawing, photography, sculpture, performance and public art. She is represented in most state and public collections throughout Australia and significant private collections throughout Asia and Europe.

Megan Walch is a contemporary Australian painter.

Bonita Ely is an Australian multidisciplinary artist who lives in Sydney, whose work has been internationally exhibited. She established her reputation as an environmental artist in the 1970s through her works concerning the Murray-Darling river system. She has a diverse practice across various media and has often addressed feminist, environmental and socio-political issues.

Pam Hallandal was an Australian artist, best known for her work in drawing and print making.

Julie Gough is an artist, writer and curator based in Tasmania, Australia.

Jess Johnson is a New York-based New Zealand contemporary artist who works in drawing, installation, animation, and virtual reality. Her drawings depict alternative realms while her collaborations with Simon Ward and Andrew Clarke adapt the world of her drawings into video animations and virtual reality.

Nell is an Australian artist working across performance, installation, video, painting and sculpture. In 2013, she won the University of Queensland Self-Portrait Award. In 2017, she was inducted into the Maitland City Hall of Fame in the category of The Arts.

Yvonne Boag is an Australian painter and printmaker whose work reflects the many places where she has lived and worked.

Louise Weaver is a contemporary Australian artist working in an array of media including sculptural installations, paintings, drawings, printmaking, collage, textiles, movement and sound. She is best known for her installation and sculptures of animals. Weaver's works have been exhibited in Australia and New Zealand and are featured in major collections both nationally and internationally.

Mel O'Callaghan is an Australian-born contemporary artist who works in video, performance, sculpture, installation, and painting. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world and received a number of awards for her artistic practice, and her work is held in a various collections in Australia and France.

Sarah Contos is an Australian artist known for her collages and installations. She has been a finalist in a number of art prizes, and was the inaugural recipient of the $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The Tin Sheds was the common name of the Sydney University Art Workshop, an Australian art workshop in Sydney, New South Wales, founded in 1969. Its name lives on in the Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Groups such as Optronic Kinetics and the Earthworks Poster Collective operated out of Tin Sheds.

Marr Grounds was an American/Australian artist, known for his sculpture and environmental art, as an educational innovator in his career as lecturer in architecture, and as the co-founder of the Tin Sheds art workshop in Sydney.

Watters Gallery (1964–2018) was a private art gallery in Riley Street Sydney, Australia, run by Frank Watters with his business partners and friends Geoffrey and Alex Legge. It was influential and well-known, hosting exhibitions and works by some of the most prominent non-mainstream artists in Australia of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Tony Tuckson, James Gleeson, Richard Larter, Robert Klippel, and Garry Shead.

References

  1. "Australian Prints + Printmaking: Joan Grounds". Australian Prints + Printmaking. 24 July 2022. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 APT (2002). "APT: Joan Grounds". Visualarts.qld.gov.au.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Grounds, Marr (30 March 2015). "Interview with Marr Grounds" (PDF) (Interview). Art Gallery of New South Wales Archive: Balnaves Foundation Australian Sculpture Archive Project. Interviewed by Edwards, Deborah. Balnaves Foundation. Art Gallery of NSW. Archived from the original (transcript) on 31 January 2023. Retrieved 31 January 2023. This is an edited transcript of a recorded interview.
  4. Allam, Lorena (24 June 2007). "The Hothouse: art and politics at the Tin Sheds" (audio (55 mins) + text). ABC Radio National . Hindsight. Guests include Donald Brook, Bert Flugelman, Guy Warren, Joan Grounds, Michael Callaghan, Chips Mackinolty, Marie McMahon, Jan Fieldsend, Roger Butler. Australian Broadcasting Corporation . Retrieved 28 January 2023.
  5. "Mixed media artist, Tin Sheds artist-in-residence and Director, 1968 - 1979, Joan Grounds". ABC Radio National . 14 February 2020. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 "'Ceramic Parcel' sculptural form by Joan Grounds". collection.maas.museum. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
  7. Ewington, Julie (2001). "In The Wild: Nature, Culture, Gender In Installation Art". In Geczy,A.; Gennochio, B. (eds.). What is Installation? An Anthology of Writings on Australian Installation Art. Power Publications. pp. 38–39. ISBN   978-1864874303.
  8. Alexander, George (1989). "The Dancer Snared: The Poetics of Joan Grounds". Eyeline. 09: 20–21.
  9. "Joan GROUNDS [Artist profile]". Visual Arts Queensland. Queensland Art Gallery. Archived from the original on 25 May 2009. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
  10. Grounds, Joan. "Red-green duration: from the portfolio". Item held by National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
  11. "Joan GROUNDS | Artists | NGV". www.ngv.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 28 August 2020.