Euan Macleod in his studio, photographed by Michel Brouet.

Join us for an Exhibition Talk with Euan Macleod and Gregory O’Brien about Euan’s exhibition Painter.

Euan Macleod: Painter is the first major touring exhibition of the artist’s work on this side of the Tasman. Christchurch-born, but resident in Sydney since the early 1980s, Euan Macleod has produced a singular, remarkable and gripping body of work. Spanning three decades of a prolific career, the 39 canvases in the exhibition take us on a journey not only through physical landscapes but also through states of mind and being.

About the speakers:

Born in Christchurch in 1956, Euan Macleod completed a Diploma of Fine Arts (Painting) at Canterbury University. After moving to Sydney, he held his first solo exhibition in 1981 at Watters Gallery, East Sydney. His works are infused with landscapes from both his birthplace and his adopted home. Since his Self-portrait; head like a hole won Australia’s most prestigious art prize, the Archibald Prize for Portraiture, in 1999, he has received numerous awards, including the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 2006 and the Gallipoli Prize (2009). Macleod is represented in public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Christchurch Art Gallery.

Born in Matamata, Gregory O’Brien trained as a journalist in Auckland and worked as a newspaper reporter in Northland before returning to study art history and English at Auckland University. With one foot in the literary world, the other in the visual art realm, Gregory has been a prolific and busy presence on the cultural scene for nearly three decades.  As Lara Strongman says ” Greg O’Brien is one of New Zealand’s most distinguished ‘cultural odd job men’. As a curator, poet, novelist, art writer, and visual artist he makes major contributions to our culture. His great achievement is to uncover, and to bring into the light, the overlooked and undersung“. With several collections of his poems and drawings published in New Zealand and internationally, O’Brien has been increasingly engaged as fine arts writer and curator since the 1990s. For the City Gallery Wellington, he curated major exhibitions by Ralph Hotere, Rosalie Gascoigne, Colin McCahon, Fiona Hall, Laurence Aberhart, John Pule, Elizabeth Thomson and others. He furthermore curated the touring Graham Percy exhibition in 2014, and he has been a co-ordinator-participant in the ‘Kermadec’ art project, a project of the Global Ocean Legacy programme of The Pew Environment Group.

Everybody welcome.