Brad Buckley

Biography

Brad Buckley was born in 1952 spending his childhood years in Sydney. His Father, Jim Buckley, owned the Newcastle Hotel in Lower George Street. The Newcastle was one of the Push pubs and Buckley senior, presided over this place, which was frequented by artists, poets, underworld figures and philosophers for almost twenty years. Brad Buckley was deeply influenced by this early exposure to the possibilities of a libertine life.

Throughout the 1970s, Brad Buckley travelled widely throughout North America and Europe. Attending St Martin’s School of Art in London and between 1980 and 1982 Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, USA where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited widely in Australia, Europe and North America, most recently at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Franklin Furnace, New York; the Visual Arts Centre, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, La Chambre Blanche, Quebec and Artspace Visual Arts Centre in Sydney. Buckley is the recipient of various grants and scholarships amongst them in 1990, he was awarded the PS 1/MoMA Institute for Contemporary Art Fellowship and in 2000 a New Work grant for projects in New York and Berlin from the Australia Council. He has been a Visiting Professor at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Over the past ten years he has presented papers and chaired sessions at several College Art Association Conference in the USA.

During 1999, he convened with John Conomos; a series of forums at Artspace Visual Arts Centre in Sydney titled The Republics of Ideas. These forums explored the rhetorical, political and cultural implications of an Australian republic. In March, 2001 Pluto Press published an anthology The Republics of Ideas edited by Buckley and John Conomos. In 2002, Artspace Visual Arts Centre published an extensive monograph on his work and in 2007 Pont La Vue Press, New York published a catalogue on his five most recent projects.

His commitment and contribution to postgraduate supervision was recognised in 2004 with the awarding of the first College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS) Award for Excellence in Research, Higher Degree Supervision.
The USA curator and critic, Brett Levine writing in the Brad Buckley monograph has suggested that:

…one finds the interventions of the voice, text, sex, architecture, power and masculinity. No single application of any of these signifiers will classify Buckley’s project, for it is not concerned with any particular one, but instead with the ways in which each combines to subvert and transgress those elements of the social and cultural which purport to be fixed, to be static and to assert a dominant set of values.

Recent Exhibitions

The Slaughterhouse Project: In Medias Res, La Chambre Blanche, Quebec, Canada, 2005

Every Great Idea Begins as a Heresy, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, Halifax, Canada, 2005

Unthinkable: etiquette, Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney, 2003

Target, Hood Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 2003

The Slaughterhouse Project : The Light on the Hill, Visual Arts Gallery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA, 2002

[SUB ROSA] … and so I hasten to turn aside from this extraordinary heat, Contemporary Art Services Tasmania, 2002

Das Schlachthaus Projeckt: Dieser Kreislauf des Begehrens, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany, 1997

The Slaughterhouse Project: On the Edge, Franklin Furance, New York, USA, 1997

Hotel On Fire, (with Jenny Watson, Via Lewandowsky, Ken Lum and Genevieve Cadieux), Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelwona, Canada, 1997

The Slaughterhouse Project - the part which is silent and moves with great slowness, Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand, 1996

Those Unspoken Tragedies (and that slashed eyE), Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney, 1995

Co-Existence: The 5th Construction in Process, The Artists' Museum, Mitzpe Ramon, Israel, 1995

1st Argentine International Mail Art Project, Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1994

a GRAMMAR of rMark (s) and an Elaboration on those who would persecut..(e), Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide, 1993

My Home is Your Home: The 4th Construction in Process, The Artists' Museum, Lodz, Poland, 1993

The Boundary Rider, 9th Biennale of Sydney, 1993, 1992

JUSTINE & JULIETTE (The Reinvention of Love) and Other SILENCES, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 1992

Red Cross, The Artists' Museum, Lodz, Poland; Berlin; Praha; Bratislawa; Sarajevo; and Tirana, 1992

The Lord hath him by the hand of a Woman, Institute for Contemporary Art, New York, USA, 1991

Recent Key Publications

Geczy, Adam, Art: Histories, Theories, Exceptions, Berg Press, Oxford, UK, 2008

Catalogue with essays by John Conomos, Brett Levine, Nikos Papastergiadis, Jacqueline Millner and Adam Geczy, Every Great Idea Begins as a Heresy, Pont La Vue Press, New York, USA, 2007

Jacqueline Millner, ‘The Slaughterhouse Project’, catalogue essay for The Slaughterhouse Project: In Medias Res, La Chambre Blanche, Quebec, Canada, 2006

Conomos, John ‘Brad Buckley, Etiquette: Space, Site, Politics’, catalogue essay for Unthinkable: Etiquette and Unthinkable: Fear of Joy (with Via Lewandowsky), Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney, 2004

Geczy, Adam and Genocchio, Benjamin (eds.), What is Installation? An Anthology of Writings on Australian Installation Art, Power Publications, Sydney, 2002

Levine, Brett Brad Buckley Monograph, Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney, 2001

Papastergiadis, Nikos ‘Politics and Art’, catalogue essay for [SUB ROSA] … and so I hasten to turn aside from this extraordinary heat, Contemporary Art Services Tasmania, 2001

Recent Awards

Residency at La Chambre Blanche, Quebec (funded by the Canadian Council for the Arts and Culture and Communications), 2005

Residency at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, Halifax, Canada, 2005/2004

New Work Grant, Australia Council, 2000

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