Tony Curran

This exhibition includes several of Curran's recent works that have included performance as a focus for creating portraits.  Working within contemporary currents of participation and performativity, the artist incorporates these aesthetics and tests them against traditional practices of drawing and painting aided by touch screen technology.

For the last five years the artist has engaged in public drawing performances in situ in gallery spaces such as the National Portrait Gallery, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, Museum of the Riverina and Fraser Studios.  These works document the evolution of this portrait practice emphasizing the role of the sitter through time and movement.

Bio
Born in Sydney in 1984, Curran has a Bachelors of Science in Psychology from Macquarie University, a Masters in Art, specializing in Drawing, from the former College of Fine Arts at the University of NSW and has recently submitted his PhD in Fine Art Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga where he lectures in art history, sound, drawing and design.  Tony has had five solo exhibitions and has more scheduled in commercial and state funded galleries across New South Wales.

Curran has been a resident artist producing participatory public programs at Fraser Studios in Sydney (2010), the Museum of the Riverina (2012), the National Portrait Gallery of Australia (2013), Radford College in Canberra (2014) and the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery (2015).  In 2008, Curran was awarded a travelling scholarship by the British Council to work in a studio in Edinburgh and in the same year was selected as a finalist for the Mosman Art Prize.  In 2014 he was selected for the Salon des Refusés of the Archibald Prize and in the same year was a finalist for the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship.  This year Curran’s painting Luke, 2015, was exhibited among the finalists of the Archibald Prize and hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.