US-based artist Anne Marie Grgich at University Art Gallery
1 October 2009
The texturally rich and distinctive work of self-taught Oregon-based artist Anne Marie Grgich will be on display in a new exhibition at the University of Sydney.
Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday opens this Sunday at the University Art Gallery and features the collage portraiture works Grigch has created over the past five years or so. This is Grgich's first solo exhibition in Australia and she will be in Sydney early next month to officially open the exhibition.
Grgich is a self-taught artist who first began making "spontaneous art" - mostly junk constructions and paintings in her family's books - at the age of 15. She introduced collage into her work in 1988 but expanded its use after a period of illness in 1997 when she began to produce works that captured the faces of people she had encountered.
Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday features a series of multi-layered handmade books and individual wall pieces that combine collage, painting and the use of often thickly applied polymer resins.
According to Professor Colin Rhodes, Dean of the University's Sydney College of the Arts and the curator of this exhibition, Grgich's works share a "luminescence and great physicality". He says that seen separately her stunning faces are "individually commanding. But seen together, they form not so much a series of portraits as a group of living presences."
Grgich has described her work as "bold and luminous, painterly, gritty, grotesque, hysterical, historic… a feverish automatic painting vocabulary with infinite mutating dialects."
Professor Rhodes, an expert in the area of Self Taught and Outsider Art (art produced by people somehow excluded from the "art game") says its Grgich's multilayered approach that creates such a startling effect.
"The resulting images appear simultaneously ancient and amazingly fresh and contemporary," says Professor Rhodes.
Professor Colin Rhodes will present two curator's talks in the University Art Gallery from noon to 1pm on Wednesday, 7 October, 2009 and Wednesday, 14 October, 2009. Then, on Wednesday, 21 October, 2009, Professor Rhodes will be joined by the artist, Ann Marie Grgich, in conversation, in what promises to be a fascinating artist event. All are welcome.
Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday will be officially opened by Anne Marie Grgich on Monday, 19 October, 2009 and Grgich will be available for interview in Australia from mid-October.
Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday closes on Sunday, 13 December, 2009.
Editor's note:
The University Art Gallery is located in War Memorial Arch, the northern end of the historic University of Sydney Quadrangle, Science Road, University of Sydney. It is open Monday to Friday, 10am to 4.30pm and Sundays, noon to 4pm. All are welcome and entry is free. Phone: (02) 9351 6883.
For further University Art Gallery information, visit the museums' website here.
Visit Anne Marie Grgich's website here.
Find more information about Self Taught and Outsider Art here.
Media contacts: Nerida Olson, public relations and marketing manager, Sydney College of the Arts on (02) 9351 1016 or n.olson@sca.usyd.edu.au or Katrina O'Brien, media officer, Sydney University Museums on (02) 9036 7842 or k.obrien@usyd.edu.au.