Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday

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 on Sunday 4 October at the University Art Gallery and features the collage portraiture works Grgich has created over the past five years or so. This is Grgich’s first solo exhibition in Australia and she will be in Sydney in mid-October 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 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 12 to 1pm on Wednesday 7 October and Wednesday 14 October. On Wednesday 21 October, Professor Rhodes will be joined by the artist Anne Marie Grgich in what promises to be a fascinating conversation.

Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday will be officially opened by Professor Colin Rhodes on Monday 19 October, 6 to 8pm. Grgich will be available for interviews in Australia from mid-October.

Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday closes on Sunday 13 December, 2009.

The University Art Gallery is located in War Memorial Arch, the northern end of the historic University of Sydney Quadrangle, Science Road, The University of Sydney. It is open Monday to Friday, 10am to 4.30pm and Sundays, 12 to 4pm. All are welcome and entry is free. Phone: (02) 9351 6883.
For further information about Self Taught and Outsider Art please visit: STOARC

For further information please contact Nerida Olson, Public Relations and Marketing Manager, Sydney College of the Arts on (02) 9351 1016 or or Katrina O’Brien, Media Officer, Sydney University Museums on (02) 9036 7842 or

Image: Anne Marie Grgich, The Land of the Lost (detail), 2008-2009.