Gillian Warden - Biography

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.