Stuart Elliott is one of Western Australia’s most respected contemporary artists, with a professional career spanning more than thirty years.
His work is primarily focused on the relationship between nature and human ‘progress’; he employs the aesthetics of industry and the urban environment to symbolise capitalist excess, while his surreal, fleshy images of the natural world serve to question the relationship between nature and artifice. His two and three-dimensional works display a sense of gothic drama, often offset by dark humour. Over recent years he has concentrated on sculptural installations and representational paintings depicting industrial wastelands and surreal naturescapes.
In 2005 Stuart received a Creative Development Fellowship from ArtsWA, in recognition of his contribution to contemporary art in Western Australia. The first stage of this project was exhibited in Sydney in 2006 as Views from the Causeway. His current exhibition moves from views from a metaphorical structure to actually including a sculptural causeway, spanning some eighteen metres. Also on exhibition will be a series of table sculptures, floor installations, and paintings.
Stuart has written of his new work, it “is an extension of that which was begun in the second half of 2005 and focuses on the tension between two themes, that of mobility or travel facilitation, and that of the static or haven like space/s. These two premises are deliberately further eroded by choice of imagery in that the 'static' is symbolised by the Box Car - a hybrid of Seatainor & Nissin Hut - both structures which are as much associated with the transient as they are with the providence of a mechanically protective environment, and the Causeway itself - a post and beam structure - evolved to offer a stable and dependable route across an otherwise difficult terrain or through a contested environment.”
Stuart was included in the critically acclaimed Focus exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, curated by John Stringer, in 2007. John McDonald wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald, “...the stand out figure is Stuart Elliott... If we look for comparisons closer to home, it is painfully obvious how superior Elliott’s work is to that of Callum Morton, who has been showered with curatorial favours, including a solo show at the MCA and a trip to the Venice Biennale.”
Stuart’s work is represented in every major Western Australian collection including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, City of Perth, BankWest, Kerry Stokes, Holmes a Court, University of Western Australia, Curtin University of Technology, Murdoch and Edith Cowan University Collections, Royal Perth Hospital and countless private collections in addition to the Sanyi Wood Sculpture Museum in Taiwan. Stuart has exhibited work throughout Australia, as well as in China, Singapore, The Philippines, Taiwan, England and Scotland, and undertaken residencies in Taiwan, England, Scotland and throughout regional Western Australia. In 2004, Western Australian art critic Dr. David Bromfield published FAKEOLOGY a major monograph contextualising Stuart’s practice over the past three decades.
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- TURNER GALLERIES | showcasing contemporary art
at 470 WILLIAM STREET NORTHBRIDGE WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6003 - TURNER GALLERIES HAS NOW CLOSED.
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