Biography on rodney pople

Stelarc is one of Australia’s leading artists, best known in Europe and Japan where he has spent much of his life. A performance artist, Stelarc’s work explores the interface between new technologies and the body. In 1980, he developed a ‘third hand’ powered by the body’s own nervous system, and in the 1990s, extended this concept to develop an entire body ‘exoskeleton’. His current project is the ‘extra ear’, as seen here surgically constructed and cell grown on the artist’s arm.

For over 30 years, Rodney Pople has watched Stelarc use his body for art in the same way that a painter uses a canvas. He first met the artist in 1977 in Munich, witnessing one of Stelarc’s full body suspensions. At the time, as now, Pople was struck by the artist’s self-control and ability to keep focussed, rising above pain.

In painting this portrait, the artist has invoked the use of the latest technologies
in a deliberate attempt to echo Stelarc’s own methods of art-m

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Collections                                                                  

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Born Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. Lives and works in Sydney.

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Diploma of Fine Arts (Photography), Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart

Postgraduate (Sculpture), Slade School of Art, London, UK

Postgraduate (Sculpture), New York Studio School, New York, USA

 

Casual lecturer in Painting, National Art School, Sydney

 

Awards

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2018              Gallipoli Art Prize (Highly Commended), Gallipoli Memorial Club, Sydney

2016              Paddington Art Prize (Winner), Sydney                      

2014              Fischer’s Ghost Art Award (Winner, James Gle

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Rodney Pople Artist and curator, after Gainsborough

Artist and curator is a portrait of the artist Rodney Pople and Sydney-based curator Felicity Fenner. The painting takes its inspiration from Gainsborough’s famous portrayal of Mr and Mrs Andrews (c1750).

“I chose Gainsborough because his portraits reveal much about the sitters, and, often more interestingly, about the artist’s perception of them,” says Pople. “Gainsborough’s portraits are invested with vitality and insight, sometimes underscored by a sardonic wit.”

Rather than the sweeping green fields of Suffolk, the depicted landscape over which Pople and Fenner preside is reminiscerande of Sydney at night, specifically the view from their Darlinghurst kitchen. “I enjoy the metaphorical significance of rendering the urban-scape in darkness, and the fact that it’s in stark contrast with the sunny optimism of Gainsborough’s.” While formal and compositional aspects of the painting echo the original, anecdotal details locate it in