Geoffrey Bartlett

8 – 31 October 2009

Light is something we seldom consciously perceive in our everyday lives - It's simply there, only coming to the forefront of our attention in the case of particularly striking natural or artificial effects. We so often perceive shadows only vaguely, and not as having form in their own right, but as absences. If light is something not consciously considered, then it might be said that shadow is also not consciously considered.

This work ‘Dusk’ asks us to consciously reconsider light and shadow by altering our perception of it’s nature through the use of colour, and through subtle illusion which breaks the symmetry between them: Light which casts distorted and unreal shadow, and shadow which achieve independence from light entirely.

Steve Wright
Lightwell Design

BIO

Geoffrey Bartlett was born in Melbourne in 1952. He first studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and in 1985 following the award of a Harkness Fellowship completed a Master of Fine Arts (Hons) at Columbia University, New York. Bartlett has lectured in sculpture at Deakin University, RMIT, Chisholm Institute and the Victorian College of the Arts. From 1990 to 1994 he was Senior Lecturer in Sculpture at Monash University.

Since the 1970s Bartlett has had over twenty solo exhibitions including most recently Geoffrey Bartlett Retrospective, The National Gallery of Victoria 2007, Geoffrey Bartlett, Drill Hall Gallery ANU Sydney 2003, Sculpture, at Waverly City Art Gallery and touring Victorian regional galleries in 1994-95; and Geoffrey Bartlett: Silver Cloud, at Deakin University, Melbourne and University of Technology, Sydney in 2001. His work has been selected for major survey exhibitions of contemporary sculpture including the Mildura Sculpture Triennial in 1978 and 1982 and the Australian Sculpture Triennial in 1981, 1987 and 1990. Bartlett was a finalist in the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award in 2002 and 2003, the McClelland Survey and Award for Contemporary Sculpture in 2003 and the National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition, National Gallery of Australia in 2001 and 2003. He was awarded the Ian Potter Foundation Sculpture Award in 1982 and the Australia Council studio in Tuscany in 1984.

Bartlett has undertaken many major public sculpture commissions, in Auckland, Melbourne, Newcastle, and Canberra. He is represented in major Australian public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, ACT Collection, Parliament House Art Collection and in many regional, university and corporate collections. Geoffrey Bartlett lives and works in Melbourne.