Artist: Anne Wallace
Birth date, place: 1970, Brisbane, Australia
This artist's profile was developed by Abbigail O'Donnell during 2014 at The University of Queensland as a part of the Visual Arts Curating and Writing course, convened by Dr Allison Holland.
Educated and trained in Brisbane and London, Anne Wallace ‘s figurative painting style found favor in the early 1990’s at the height of postmodernist angst. Her most notable canvases depict scenes of ambiguous meaning and atmosphere, which have been variously compared to Bathus, Magritte and Beckmann in their ability to create tension and layers of meaning.
The recipient of several prestigious scholarships and awards, including winning the Sulman Prize in 1999, Anne Wallace ‘s artistic career has spanned over two decades. Holding a Bachelor of Arts (QUT) and Master of Arts (Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London), Wallace primarily works in oils in a figurative style, and is often described as a contemporary realist. Despite working and living in Brisbane, Wallace first exhibited in Melbourne and Sydney, before a retrospective of her work was shown in Brisbane in 2000. A veteran of many solo and shared exhibitions, her work has been repeatedly linked to the world of cinema and film noir still shots, despite her insistence to the contrary. The unifying essence of her practice might better be expressed in terms of capturing mental snapshots of poignant moments of ambiguity. Wallace’s paintings catch the instant where dramatic action is suspended , leaving the viewer searching for resolution.This gives her work traction in being about nothing and something significant at the same time. Her work is held in national, state and regional collections. Wallace has not produced any new work since 2011.
People say of my work that ‘it looks portentous and sinister, but perhaps only something mundane is actually happening’, or vice-versa. In other words, perhaps it’s about the sinister underlying the mundane — the unheimlich, the uncanny — but then again, maybe it’s not. Anne Wallace
http://www.visualarts.qld.gov.au/content/fortitude_statement.asp?name=AnneWallace_FullStatement
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
Queensland Art Gallery, Australia
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
Brisbane City Art Gallery, Australia
Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, Queensland, Australia
Macquarie Bank Collection, Sydney, Australia
2011 The Shades, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia
2009 Release the Bats, Queensland Art Gallery – Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
2005 Song Cycle, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia
2002 High Anxiety, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, Brisbane (with Michael Harrison), Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand The Go-Betweens Paintings, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia
2000 Private Rooms, Brisbane City Gallery, Brisbane, Australia A story that can’t be told, University of South Australia Art Museum: City West Campus, Adelaide, Australia
2011 Nobody knows – Simon Mee, Rob McHaffie, Anne Wallace, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland
2006 Parallel Lives: Australian Painting Today – TarraWarra Biennial 2006 TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville,
Victoria, Australia
2003-2004 Art Australia, touring Germany: Kunst Raum Sylt-Quelle, Gallerie Seippel, Köln, Stätische
Gallerie, Delmenhorst, Germany
2000 Fortitude – New Art from Queensland, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
1999-2000 Moral Hallucination: Channelling Hitchcock, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.
1998 In Absentia, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, Australia
Collaborations (with Eugene Carchesio), Bellas Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
1994 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships, University of South Australia ArtMuseum, Adelaide, Australia
Butler, R. Anne Wallace’s Confessions, Art and Australia, volume 32, number 3 1995
Conomos, J. Art and cinema as the perfect crime, Art Monthly Australia, Number 128 April 2000
Colless, E. Double Jeopardy, catalogue essay, Anne Wallace – Recent Paintings, 1999
Daw, R. In the absence of narrative, catalogue essay, Fortitude, Queensland Art Gallery, August
2000
Hall, K. Moments Away, in absentia exhibition catalogue, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National
University, Canberra, 1999
Ross, T. Staging the Gaze in the Art of Anne Wallace, catalogue essay, Anne Wallace – Recent Paintings, 1999
Spinks, J. Mirror Mirror; Cruelty and Innocence in Recent Paintings by Louise Hearman, Mary Scott and Anne Wallace, Art and Australia, vol.35, no.2 19
1999 Six month residency at Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, awarded by the Power Institute of Fine
Arts, University of Sydney and the Australia Council
1999 Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/sulman
1995 Melville Nettleship Award, Slade School of Fine Art, London, England
1993 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships
http://w3.unisa.edu.au/samstag/scholars
1990 Hobday and Hingston Bursary, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
Oxlades Prize, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
You might be interested in...