Archives: Artists

Michael Portley moved to Melbourne from Brisbane after completing his Bachelor of Visual Arts at Queensland University of Technology in 1991. During his time as a student Portley was taught by the esteemed artist and painting lecturer William Robinson whose influence is still evident today although now, after over twenty years of exhibiting and refining his style, Portley has now fully developed an iconic visual language of his own.

Predominantly a painter of the Australian landscape, the scope of Portley’s ideas and practice when interpreting the environment is not limited to formal notions of site-specific representation. The landscapes that Portley paints accept that virtually all of our environment has been impacted by human actions and in so many cases are not in essence natural but constructed environments. In addition symbolic dreamlike interventions have also increasingly been prevalent in his approach to depicting the world around us.

Born in 1933 in Kent, England, Andrew Sibley migrated to outback Queensland with his family in 1948. After leaving the family property he spent a short time in Papua New Guinea before returning to Brisbane in the late 1950’s. In the early 1960’s Sibley was a part of the ‘Brisbane School’ with Jon Molvig, Roy Churcher and, further away on Bribie Island, Ian Fairweather. Sibley found early success winning prestigious prizes and was invited to exhibit at the Whitechapel Galley in London in 1962 and the Paris Biennale in 1963. In the mid-late 1960’s Sibley was a part of the Rudy Komon gallery stable in Sydney that included many of the most important Australian artists of the time and where he established life long connections with these fellow artists.

After moving to Melbourne in the late 1960’s Sibley was appointed a lecturer at RMIT – a position he held from 1967 – 1987 – the impact of his teaching and disciplined methods imparted on generations of Melbourne based artists. Later Sibley went on to be a senior painting lecturer at Monash University from 1990-1999.

In his own career, the 1970’s was a decade of inspiration and experimentation spending time in Europe firstly at a residency in West Berlin in 1972 where he drew influence from artists such as Max Beckman, Jean Dubuffet, Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee and the like, as well as travelling back and forth to London for new exhibitions of his contemporaries such as Francis Bacon. The influence of this early part of the 1970’s were profound on Sibley and his style developed to be more avante-garde as he explored the ‘human condition’. Sibley began to experiment with new materials and created many works in which his depictions of the human figure, or figures, were encased in perspex boxes “trapped like petals between pages, or moths between glass plates.”

In the 1980’s Sibley again evolved as an artist and in this period achieved major success with his Circus Series that continued his exploration of the vices and virtues of humankind. It was at this time that Sibley was regularly exhibited in Europe and the United States, while in Australia Sibley exhibited prolifically Nationwide. In addition to his commercial success Sibley’s work was acquired by the vast majority of museum collections throughout Australia.

In the 1990’s and 2000’s the mood of Sibley’s work shifted to less confrontational imagery as he came to grips with the angst and complication of his youth. ‘Sibley’s people’, the same cast of characters that had travelled with him in his early years appear to transition through life with him, moreover the works from this era are profoundly more joyous as he entered a more content part of his life.

In recent years Sibley has had success in the International Contemporary Art market with his work being acquired by significant Private Collectors from Asia, Europe and the United States. Sibley’s work was shown at Art Stage Singapore 2015 & a Solo exhibition in Berlin in 2017, in addition to the presentations in Australia that included numerous Solo Exhibitions and major highlights such as his work being shown at the Melbourne Art Fair 2014, 2020 (OVR), 2022; Sydney Contemporary 2018, 2019, 2020 (OVR), 2021 (OVR); & Spring 1883 in 2021 & 2023.

Sibley was also a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University from 1967-1987 and Head of Painting at Monash University from 1990-1999. His mark and influence on Australian art, and the artists under his tutelage, is indelible.

Benedict Sibley is a visual artist working between Naarm/Melbourne and the Kinglake Ranges in regional Victoria. His practice is drawing and printmaking based, informed by observation, photography and research. Charcoal, graphite, ink and powdered pigments are Sibley’s central mediums while photogravure etchings and mapmaking form part of his expanded drawing practice.

After completing a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) at RMIT University in 1991, Sibley had a 20year career as a furniture designer and maker. In 2015 he returned to full time art practice. Following study at the New York Studio Sibley’s works have been selected for a significant number of high-profile exhibitions and prizes, including the Rick Amor, Paul Guest, Swan Hill and Kedumba Drawing Awards.

In 2022 he was one of seven Australian and international artists featured in Megacosm, a conceptual show at Project8 Gallery, Melbourne. Sibley also teaches drawing at VCA, and he was a contributing author on two new interdisciplinary books, Carbon and Hot Cities with RMIT University. School in 2016, Sibley completed a Master of Contemporary Art at Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), University of Melbourne in 2018.

The work of Jasmine Skutela with her use of bright bold colours that partially hide or mask blurred imagery is immediately engaging. The first impressions that emanate from these paintings is of an all absorbing energetic atmosphere that while contained within the parameters of the canvas are omnipresent when in proximity to these beautifully balanced compositions while her use of a limited palette in each individual work only adds to their intensity as the figuration is subsumed by an overlay of abstraction.

Within this mist of colour and abstracted shapes Skutela’s work is created as a visual reflection of the way in which we move around public spaces often with a sense of anonymity mixed with a sense of incomprehension knowing so little of each others lives, then in more private settings we’re able to experience a stronger feeling of collectivity and more loving humane connection. Interwoven into these works, that at scale are so dramatic and then in a smaller format so intimate, Skutela recognises that beyond our everyday joys & aspirations we live in a World that moves at such speed that it can all be so disorientating as to cause us to blur through the spaces we all share.

Gillian Warden puts her love of paint at the centre of her practice. In recent years she has pursued a ‘formless’ approach to painting. Textures are layered and scraped, folded and poured, and colours emerge from the painting itself. The works that she creates may be years in the making, they become a story of surface, transformed and in flux, exuding an energy that continues to change them long after her own work with them is finished. Qualities and forces of the natural world abound in Warden’s work, but there is no literality here. These are works that invite you to immerse in feeling states. States that are shifting, emergent, hidden and hinted. States that wildly, wonderfully, offer you everything. The quality of engagement that the works inspire is visceral and transformative. These are worlds we can enter into and be changed by.

Since 1986 Warden has had 18 solo exhibitions; participated in over 40 group exhibitions; completed a Masters of Fine Art at RMIT University in 2012; was a finalist in the Mt Eyre Art Prize, Perth Albany Art Award, Mandorla Art Award; and is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Australian Capital Equity Collection, City of Wanneroo, Royal Perth Hospital, Bankwest and St John of God Hospital. Warden exhibited at Sydney Contemporary in 2018 & 2019, in 2020 she had an OVR exhibition Periscope, in 2021 Ka-Bloom! will be Warden’s 7th Solo exhibition with Jacob Hoerner Galleries.