IAN NORTH

b. 1945 Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Lives and works in Adelaide

Ian North is an artist who is also a widely published writer on the visual arts. He employs photography and painting to address considerations of place, identity and post-conceptual authenticity, in recent years crossing the Pacific by container ship and undertaking a sea voyage to East Antarctica to photograph the maritime environment. Has produced many bodies of work, including the portfolio Felicia: South Australia 1973–78; Canberra Suite 1980-81 (pioneering medium format colour film as an art medium); three Pseudo Panorama series, 1985–1988 (combining painting and colour photography); Home & Away, 1992; Haven, 2001/2013; East Antarctia 1915, 2015; Southern Ocean off Snares Islands 2015.

He has exhibited in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide (sixteen solo exhibitions), and in group exhibitions in London, Asia and the United States. His work is represented in fifteen Australian public collections. His publications include books on the Australian modernists Dorrit Black and Margaret Preston in the 1970s and a range of essays on the impact of the Indigenous art revolution (including ‘Expanse’, 1998, ‘StarAboriginality’, 2001, and ‘The Kindness of Kathleen Petyarre’ 2001). He has also addressed the intellectual relationship between art and neuro-aesthetics (‘Notes Towards a Natural Way to do Art History’, in North [ed.], Visual Animals, 2007).

North was Director of the Manawatu Art Gallery, Aotearoa/New Zealand 1969-71, immigrating to Australia to become Curator of Paintings at the Art Gallery of South Australia 1971-80 and Foundation Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia 1980-84. He subsequently served on the National Gallery's Council, working with curators on the NGA’s acquisition policy, and also on the boards of the Biennale of Sydney and the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand. His qualifications include MA and MFA degrees in photography from the University of New Mexico. He held a personal chair at the University of South Australia where he was Head of the South Australian School of Art (1984-1993). He is currently Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Adelaide where he is a member of the J M Coetzee Centre for Creative Arts.

In 2014 he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (AM) and a Doctor of Arts honoris causa from the University of Adelaide.

ARTIST INFORMATION

BIOGRAPHY

1945	Born Aotearoa / New Zealand
1971	Arrived in Australia
Currently	Adjunct Professor, University of Adelaide

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017	Fleurieu Series, Art Gallery Of South Australia, Adelaide
2015	East Antarctica 1915, GAGPROJECTS, Adelaide
2013	Haven 2001, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide Felicia, South Australia 1973 - 78, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
2010	Adelaide Suite, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide Ian North Photographs 1974 - 2009, Art Gallery of South Australia
2009	Sail Away, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
2006	Symptoms, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
2005	Canberra Suite & Canberra Coda (1980-81), Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
2004	Sail Away, Apartment, Melbourne
1998	Vault (with Helen Fuller), Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
1997	Correlations, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
1992	Home & Away, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
1990	Manifest Destiny, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
1988	Pseudo Panoramas, Cazneaux series, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
1987	Seasons, Pseudo Panoramas, Australia, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
1986	Seasons, Pseudo Panoramas, Contemporary Art Centre, Adelaide

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2016	Anything at all, Adelaide Central School of Art Gallery Great Southern Land, Adelaide Airport Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography, Art Gallery of South Australia 2016 Fleurieu Art Prize, Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum, UniSA, Adelaide
2015	CACSA Contemporary 2015, Contemporary Art Centre of SA, Adelaide Urban Suburban, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra
2014	The Extreme Climate of Nicholas Folland, Art Gallery of South Australia The Road. Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne Panorama. Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth
2013	Heartland, Art Gallery of South Australia
2012	CACSA @ 70: Member's Exhibitions 1 & 2, Contemporary Art Centre, Adelaide Daya / Kindness, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; RMIT Gallery, Melbourne
2011	Photography & Place: approaches to Auatralian Landscape Photography 1970s until now, Art Gallery of New South Wales
2010	The New New. CACSA Contemporary 2010, SASA Gallery, Adelaide Painthing, Australian Experimental Art Foundation
2009	Dystopia: portraits of the urban landscape, Adelaide Central Gallery
2007	True Portraits, Adelaide Central Gallery
2006	Fleurieu Penninsula Biennale, Finalists' exhibition The Ability to Lie, Horsham Regional Art Gallery
2005	Archibald Prize, Finalists' exhibition, Art Gallery of New South Wales
2004	Good Looking, National Gallery of Victoria
2002	Arid Arcadia, Art Gallery of South Australia
2001	Seeing Through Landscape, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
2000	Chemistry, Art Gallery of South Australia
1998	The Painted Coast, Art Gallery of South Australia
1997	Painted Realities: hand-coloured photographs from 1839 to the present, University of Wyoming & US tour
1996	Colonial/Postcolonial, Museum of Modern Art, Heide
1992	Location, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, and Asia tour Southern Crossings / Empty Land, Camerawork Gallery, London and tour
1991	Fertile Ground, Artworks Gallery, Griffith University
1988	Stories of Australian Art, Commonwealth Institute, London South Australia Rephotographed, Collage Gallery, Adelaide

SELECTED COMMISSIONS

2005

The World is All that is Not the Case, Department of Philosophy, University of Melbourne

2000

The Intelligence of Blood. Department of Surgery, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide

1996

The Olive Plantation. Art Gallery of South Australia

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bolton, Ken, ‘“Maintain the Buzz”¬– Lenin’. FORMGUIDE, Australian Experimental Art Foundation
Bullock, Natasha, ‘Time–Memory–Place’, in Judy Annear (ed.), Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, Sydney: Art Gallery of NSW, 2007
pp. 290, 300
De-Almeida, Pedro, Ian North: Felicia: South Australia 1973-1978. Sydney: Australian Centre for Photography, 2013 (includes Pedro de Almeida, ‘ “Just allowing it to be” ’, a conversation with Ian North’, pp. 7–18).
Galstyan, Vigan, ‘Ian North’, in Judy Annear. Photography & Place: approaches to Australian Landscape Photography 1970s until Now. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2011, n.p.
Geczy, Adam, ‘Ian North and the Anti-Picturesque’, Eyeline#71 (2011), pp. 36–40
Geczy, Adam, ‘Sail Away: Ian North’, Artlink vol 29 #3, 2009, p. 92
Marsh, Anne, Look: Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980. Melbourne: MacMillan, 2010, pp. 202-203, 267, 337
Palmer, Daniel, ‘Ian North: Canberra Suite (with Coda)’ in Ian North: Canberra Suite and Coda, 1980–81 (Adelaide: Greenaway Art Gallery, 2005)
Thomas, Sarah. Chemistry: Art in South Australia 1990-2000: The Faulding Exhibition, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2000
Zagala, Maria. ‘Truth in restraint: the art of Ian North’, Art & Australia, Vol. 50 no.1 (Spring, 2012). pp. 138-145.

COLLECTIONS

Adelaide Festival Centre; Artbank, Sydney; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Art Gallery of South Australia; Canberra Museum and Gallery; Flinders University of South Australia Art Museum; Griffith University, Brisbane; Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria; Parliament House, Canberra; Canberra Museum and Gallery; Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; Riddoch Gallery, Mount Gambier

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