1. Gareth Sansom was born on 19 November 1939 and is an Australian artist, painter, printmaker and collagist and winner of the 2008 John McCaughey Memorial Prize of $100,000.
19 Facts About Gareth Sansom
1. 2.
Gareth Sansom was an associate of Brett Whiteley and there was a likely mutual influence.
3.
Gareth Sansom's work is represented by the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Mertz Collection.
4.
Gareth Sansom's paintings are eclectic, studded with allusions both historical, cultural and personal.
5.
Stylistically Gareth Sansom uses a wide array of painting techniques but signature devices include allowing earlier layers of paint to remain visible, hard-edge geometric shapes juxtaposed with playful, lyrical, more organic or atmospheric passages of paint and figurative "doodles", often at the margins of the paintings.
6.
Gareth Sansom held his first solo exhibition in 1959 at Richman Gallery in Melbourne.
7.
Gareth Sansom asked Arthur Boyd to open the exhibition and Boyd agreed.
8.
In particular Gareth Sansom developed a series of photographs in which he portrayed Hollywood film noir icons such as Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford.
9.
Gareth Sansom was head of painting at the VCA School of Art, prior to becoming Dean in 1986.
10.
In 1982, Gareth Sansom was a visiting artist at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and in 1985 he was Artist-in-Residence at The University of Melbourne.
11.
In 1991, Gareth Sansom represented Australia at the Indian Triennial held in New Delhi.
12.
Gareth Sansom's aim had been to make one watercolour per day during this period, using humble materials, but on archival paper.
13.
From 1986 to 1991 Gareth Sansom was Dean of the School of Art at the Victorian College of the Arts.
14.
Gareth Sansom has recently returned to earlier themes in his paintings by inserting digital photographs of himself in various disguises using latex horror masks and realistic female masks, as well as incorporating latex prosthetics of female body parts; his aim being to create an uneasy tension between the literalness of the photographs and the painterliness within the paintings, which can veer wildly between abstraction and figuration.
15.
Gareth Sansom featured in the important survey show of Australian painting, Painting, More Painting, mounted at ACCA, Melbourne.
16.
Also in 2016, Gareth Sansom was included in Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney.
17.
In 2016 Gareth Sansom was interviewed in a digital story and oral history for the State Library of Queensland's James C Sourris AM Collection.
18.
Gareth Sansom spoke about his life, art practices and his success at winning the Hugh Williamson Prize; the McCaughey Memorial Prize; and the Dobell Prize for Drawing.
19.
In 2019, Gareth Sansom was included in the exhibition, Ways of Seeing: recent acquisitions from the collection, staged at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.