about

Curriculum
Education
Solo exhibitions
Group exhibitions
Awards
Commissions
Residencies
Catalogues
Collections

Essays
Silent Windows (catalogue essay), by Dr Wendy Garden, Curator, Maroondah Art Gallery (2012)
Silent Windows (exhibition opening speech), by The Honourable Paul M Guest QC (2012)
Melancholic Wonderland, by Associate Professor Ann McCulloch (2008)
NZArtMonthly – Urban Dislocation: the art of Terry Matassoni (2006)

 

Curriculum
View Terry Matassoni's curriculum as a PDF file (111KB, 7 pages)


Born 1959, Melbourne (VIC), Australia

Education
2005 – Master of Arts Degree, Deakin University
1982 – Post-Graduate Diploma in Art, Victorian College of the Arts
1980 – Diploma in Painting, Victorian College of the Arts
1978 – Fine Art Studies, Bendigo College of Advanced Education

Solo exhibitions
2022 – Neighbourhood and beyond, Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne
2019 – A bigger picture, Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne
2016 – Diversions, Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne
2015 – Looking Back, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Swan Hill
2013 – The Everyday Image: Reproduction and Participation, Chicago Art Department, Pilsen, Chicago, USA
2013 – Observations, Australian Galleries, Smith Street, Melbourne
2012 – Silent windows, Maroondah Art Gallery, Melbourne
2012 – On the river, The Art Vault, Mildura
2012 – A world observed, Geelong Gallery, Geelong
2010 – Urban sanctuary, Australian Galleries, Smith Street, Melbourne
2008 – Recent Paintings and Gouaches, Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne
2007 – Multitude and solitude, Australian Galleries Painting & Sculpture, Melbourne
2006 – Five cities, Muka Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
2005 – Master's Examination Exhibition, Artists studio, Melbourne
2004 – Crossings, Fremantle Art Centre, Perth
2004 – In the frame, BMGART, Adelaide
2003 – A walk into town, Stonington Museum of Art, Deakin University, Melbourne
2001 – Recent work, Mira Fine Art, Melbourne
1999 – Works on Paper, Bulle Galleries, Melbourne
1998 – New Lifestyle, BMGART, Adelaide
1998 – It is a nice space, Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney
1997 – The Apartment Dwellers, Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne
1996 – A View from My Window, BMGART, Adelaide
1995 – Trouble in the 90s, Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne
1994 – The Inner City, Recent Gouaches, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Rovereto, Italy
1992 – Recent Work, Realities Gallery, Melbourne
1991 – Recent Works, Irving Galleries, Sydney
1991 – Selected Works 1986–1991, Swan Hill Regional Gallery of Contemporary Art
1990 – Works on Paper, Realities Gallery, Melbourne
1989 – Paintings and Works on Paper, Realities Gallery, Melbourne
1986 – Paintings and Gouaches, Realities Gallery, Melbourne
1984 – Recent Paintings, Realities Gallery, Melbourne

Group exhibitions
2021 – DRAWN from the CDU Art Collection – sketches, drawings, illustrations and works-on-paper from 1976 to 2021, Charles Darwin University Art Collection and Gallery, Darwin
2021 – Rick Amor Drawing Award, McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Langwarrin, VIC
2020 – A Collection of Stranger Things, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, VIC
2019 – Australian Galleries: The Purves Family Business. The First Four Decades, Book Launch and Group Exhibition, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
2019 – Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Presbyterian Ladies College (PLC), Sydney
2018 – Paul Guest Art Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, VIC
2018 – Impressions, Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne
2017 – 9 X 5 NOW Exhibition: ART150, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne
2016 – Rick Amor Drawing Prize, Ballarat Art Gallery, Ballarat
2015 – On the Beach, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, VIC
2015 – In context, Muka Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
2015 – Cool calm and collected, recent acquisitions from the Gold Coast City Gallery
2014 – Roald Dahl Gallery, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
2014 – Group Exhibition Muka Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
2014 – Corporeal – a print exchange folio, Switchback Gallery, Churchill
2014 – Federation University Australia
2014 – One of each, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
2013 – Fine Art Charity Auction, Lasallian Foundation, Melbourne
2013 – The Kinglake Poject, The Cube Gallery, Melbourne
2013 – Trams: Moving Pictures, Old Treasury Building, Melbourne
2013 – Corporeal – a print exchange folio, Geelong Gallery, Geelong, Victoria
2011 – Rick Amor Print Prize, Montsalvat Gallery, Eltham, Victoria
2011 – ANL Maritime Art Prize, Melbourne
2011 – Large exhibition of small works, Australian Galleries, Roylston Street, Sydney
2011 – Large exhibition of small works, Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne
2010 – Fundraising show, Maroondah Art Gallery, Ringwood, Melbourne
2010 – Stone Love, Works from the studio, Lancaster Press, Brooklyn, Victoria
2010 – Fine Art Charity Auction, Lasallian Foundation, Melbourne
2010 – Summer Stock Show, Australian Galleries, Smith Street, Melbourne
2010 – The ritual of dining in middle class suburbia, Museum of New New Painting Toronto, Canada
2010 – Artists' Prints made with Integrity I, Australian Galleries, Smith Street, Melbourne
2009–10 – Summer Stock Show, Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne
2009 – Highlights from the Deakin Collection, Lascelles Exhibition Gallery, Alfred Deakin Prime Ministerial Library, Deakin University, Waterfront Campus
2007 – Summer Stock Show, Australian Galleries Painting & Sculpture, Melbourne
2007 – Small Pleasures, Australian Galleries Painting & Sculpture, Melbourne
2007 – Stock Show, Australian Galleries Painting & Sculpture, Melbourne
2006 – Stock Show, Australian Galleries Painting & Sculpture, Melbourne
2005 – One Square Foot, Melbourne Art Rooms, Port Melbourne
2005 – The Sea, Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney
2005 – New Prints, Lancaster Studio Gallery, Brooklyn, Victoria
2005 – Site, Highlights from the Deakin University Collection, Warrnambool Art Gallery, Victoria
2004 – Between a rock and a hard place, Lancaster Studio Gallery, Brooklyn, Victoria
2004 – Recent Acquisitions, Deakin University Art Collection, Stonington Museum of Art, Deakin University
2003 – The Shell, Fremantle Print Award, Fremantle, Western Australia
2003 – Works on Paper, Brett Ballard Gallery, Sydney
2003 – Finalist 'Dobell Prize for Drawing, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
2003 – Geelong Print Prize, Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong
2002 – POST 1970s, from the permanent collection, Swan Hill Regional Gallery
2001 – Kunst for born og unge, Horsens Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
2001 – Muka, International exhibition of Youth prints made at the Muka Workshop, Auckland, New Zealand, travelling Europe in 2001, 2002
2001 – Rena Ellen Jones memorial print award 2001, Warrnambool Art Gallery
2000 – Selected Works by Gallery Artists, Bulle Galleries, Melbourne
1999 – Interpretation, Muka Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
1999 – Thinking Aloud, Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney
1999 – Affordable Treasures, Bulle Galleries, Melbourne
1999 – Exchanging Places, Ray Hughes Gallery in residence at the George Gallery, Melbourne
1999 – We are Australian, The George Adams Gallery, Melbourne (in association with the Melbourne International Festival)
1998 – Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, Geelong Art Gallery (by selection)
1998 – National Works on Paper, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington
1998 – Selected Works by Invited Artists, Bulle Galleries, Melbourne
1998 – Works on Paper and Original Fine Art Prints, Bulle Galleries, Melbourne
1998 – Inkpots to Internet-Nucleus to Diversity, Former Student Art Exhibition, The Phyllis Palmer Gallery, Latrobe University, Bendigo
1997 – Summer Show, BMG Art, Adelaide
1997 – Preview 1997, Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne
1997 – Highlights from the Collection, Swan Hill Regional Gallery, Swan Hill
1997 – Visy Board Art Prize, The Orangery, Richmond Grove Winery, Tanunda, South Australia
1997 – Nillumbik Art Award Exhibition, The Nillumbik Shire Council, Eltham
1997 – Muka International Youth Print Exhibition, Gallery 101, Melbourne
1997 – Figures from Life, Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney
1996 – The Art of Collecting 2, Linden Gallery, Melbourne
1996 – ACAF5 Fifth Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne
1995 – Youth Prints, Auckland Museum; travelled throughout New Zealand
1995 – Recent Lithographs and Commissioned Youth Prints, Muka Studios, Auckland
1994 – ACAF4 Fourth Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne
1994 – Selections from the Collection, Museum of Modern Art, Heide, Melbourne
1994 – Castlemaine Drawing Prize, Castlemaine Art Gallery
1992 – Miniatures: Small Works by Selected Gallery Artists, Realities Gallery, Melbourne
1992 – Selected Works from the Margaret Stewart Endowment, National Gallery of Victoria
1991 – National Swan Hill Print & Drawing Show, Swan Hill Regional Gallery of Contemporary Art, Swan Hill
1990–1991 – Raising the Furies: Elements of Disquiet in Figurative Painting 1985–1990, toured Regional Galleries – Wodonga, Wangaratta, Benalla and Shepparton (curated by Stephen Cox)
1990 – Eighth Ansett Hamilton Art Award, City of Hamilton Art Gallery (Acquired)
1990 – Australian Drawing – Contemporary, John Buckley Fine Art, Melbourne
1990 – Australian Water Colours and Gouaches, John Buckley Fine Art, Melbourne
1990 – ACAF2 Second Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne
1990 – The City: A Very Different Place, Museum of Modern Art, Heide, Melbourne
1989 – Popular Front, Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Melbourne
1989 – Swan Hill Print and Drawing Show, Swan Hill Regional Gallery of Contemporary Art, Swan Hill (Acquired)
1989 – Heidelberg and Heritage – Two Visions of Australians 100 Years Apart, Linden Gallery, Melbourne
1989 – Freestyle Australian Art 1960s–Now, National Gallery of Victoria
1988 – Exquisite Corpse, 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne
1988 – Selected Finalists: Faber Castell Drawing Award, Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney
1988 – A Horse Show: The Horse in Contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Modern Art, Heide, Melbourne
1987 – Selected Contemporary Drawings, Museum of Modern Art, Heide, Melbourne
1985 – Keith and Elizabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship, Victorian College of the Arts Gallery, Melbourne (Received Honourable Mention)
1980 – The Paris Prize, Victorian College of the Arts Gallery, Melbourne

Awards
2019 – Semifinalist, Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Juniper Hall, Sydney
2019 – Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize, Montsalvat, Melbourne
2019 – Finalist, Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Presbyterian Ladies College, Sydney
2018 – Finalist, Paul Guest Art Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, VIC
2012 – Panel member, City of Melbourne Arts Projects Grants Assessment Panel
2011 – ANL Maritime Art Prize (Finalist), Melbourne
2011 – Rick Amor Print Prize, (finalist) Montsalvat Gallery, Eltham, Victoria
2003 – Dobell Prize for Drawing (Finalist), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
1997 – Visy Board Art Prize, (filalist) The Orangery, Richmond Grove Winery, Tanunda, SA
1994 – Diamond Valley Invitation Award (Acquired), Victoria
1990–91 Eighth Ansett Hamilton Art Award (Acquired), City of Hamilton Art Gallery, Hamilton, VIC
1989 – Swan Hill Print and Drawing Show (Acquired), Swan Hill Regional Gallery of Contemporary Art, Swan Hill, VIC
1988 – Grant for the Victorian Health Promotion to work on a Theatre Arts Project
1985 – Artist Development Grant – Victorian Ministry for the Arts
1982 – Visual Arts Board Travel Grant to Europe
1981 – Sir Russell Drysdale Memorial Prize for drawing

Commissions
2020 – Commissioned artwork for Extinct: Artistic Impressions of Our Lost Wildlife by Benjamin Gray, published by CSIRO Publishing
2017 – Book cover for Orpheus in the Undershirt, by Kevin Densley, Ginninderra Press
2016 – Book cover for Ecstatic Consumption, The Spectacle of Global Dystopia in Contemporary American Literature, by Pavlina Radia
1997 – Poster, Burnewang Food and Wine Festival
1994 – Melbourne Theatre Company, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll
1994 – Youth Prints, Muka Studios, Auckland, New Zealand
1993 – Diamond Valley Invitation Art Award, VIC
1992 – Commissioned to paint a tram, Ministry for the Arts, Transporting Arts Programme sponsored by Vic Health
1991 – Commissioned to design image for the Melbourne Theatre Company's Money and Friends, written by David Williamson
1989 – Victorian Racing Club, New Pavilion, Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne
1985 – Keith and Elizabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship (Received Honourable Mention), Victorian College of the Arts Gallery, Melbourne

Residencies
2012 – Artist in Residence, The Art Vault, Mildura, VIC
2011 – Artist in Residence, The Art Vault, Mildura, VIC
2003 – Artist in Residence, Caulfield Grammar, Wheelers Hill campus, Melbourne
1994 – Artists in Schools Program, Preston Special Development School, Melbourne
1992–3 – Artist in Residence, St Jeans Baptiste College, New York, USA

Catalogues
2020 – A Collection of Stranger Things, exhibition publication, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, VIC
2016 – Ritratti: Thirty-one Italian Artists from Victoria, by Cerbo Marco Maria, published by The University of Melbourne and The Victorian College of The Arts

Collections
Accenture, Melbourne
American Consulate, Florence, Italy
Artbank, Sydney
Australian Alliance Insurance, Victoria
Banyule City Council, Victoria
Blue Mountain College, New Zealand
Caulfield Grammar, Melbourne
City of Hamilton Art Gallery, Victoria
City of Maribyrnong, Victoria
Deakin University Art Collection, Victoria
E.R. White Club Collection, Trinity College, Melbourne University, Victoria
Geelong Gallery, Geelong, Victoria
Gold Coast City Gallery, Surfers Paradise, QLD
Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital Collection, Victoria
Kangan Batman TAFE, Victoria
Lowenstein Arts Management Collection, Melbourne
Melbourne Convention Centre, Victoria
Monash Medical Centre, Victoria
Monash University Collection, Victoria
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria
Maroondah Art Gallery, Melbourne
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Victoria; Museum of Victoria, Melbourne
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand
Museum Victoria, Melbourne
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Northern Territory University, Darwin
Philips Fox Collection
Santos Mining Collection, South Australia
Smorgon Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Victoria
The Charles Sturt University Art Collection, New South Wales
The Art Vault, Mildura, Victoria
The Peter Mac Art Collection, Melbourne
Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne
Victorian Racing Club, Flemington, Victoria


View Terry Matassoni's curriculum (PDF file, 111KB, 7 pages), including bibliography

 

Essays

Silent Windows (catalogue essay), by Dr Wendy Garden, Curator, Maroondah Art Gallery (2012)

Excerpt: "Terry Matassoni's large-scale canvases respond to this moment. Life reduced to a spectacle in the screen terrain of urban space is depicted in many of his canvases. Rigid geometric forms pile up like blocks creating architectural screenscapes that expose the people within. Advertising billboards hover above desolate city streets portraying seductive bodies in cinematic freeze-frames; while illuminated windows morph into large, flat-screen televisions to provide glimpses of the everyday moments between ordinary people. Bringing together works over a twenty year period, the exhibition, Silent Windows, considers the psychogeography of the screen city."

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Silent Windows (exhibition opening speech), by The Honourable Paul M Guest QC (2012)

Excerpt: "My attention was drawn to The World Outside and in respect of which, Terry commented, represented the principal rationale of those matters central to his work.

The 3 fundamental issues conceptualise, firstly, an abstraction of multiple narratives whereby he depicts vignettes of urban reality as a frame of reference into which he then renders unrelated and isolated events of private lives. It is within this domain that a metaphysical connectedness joins each of the actors and the images within the overall civic environment, yet beyond the physical properties of the multiple images The episodes are sourced from a fusion of direct life observation, extensions of realism and invention.

The second issue involves the ostensibly contradictory allusion of "inside/outside", so readily apparent in works such as The World Outside and The Outcast. In these paintings, for example, privacy is exposed in a cross pollinated mutual disconnect with the public in variable and significant ways. Importantly, it seems to me, it is left to the viewer to interpret and analyse in an abstract sense the apparent polarisation of the diverse images.

The third issue is the variously discrete stereotypic representation of "urban" life, where, as Terry explained to me, "everything happens". It is within this ambit that he balances, in an abstract way, imagination with both shape and form. It is not simply a representation of realism, but a projection of a latent power or force that both commands and influences the image. The distorted perspective is built upon the foundation of reality and from which the multiple competing metaphysical forces within each work become central to the work itself.

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Melancholic Wonderland, by Associate Professor Ann McCulloch (2008)

Terry Matassoni deals with the rootless, the alienated and the self absorbed. The characters that people his paintings inhabit nevertheless a world enflamed by nuance, energy and magic. The world that these paintings present is intense and dramatic and at its heart we witness a paradox. On one hand his de-populated paintings are figurative in the proclaimed absences; on the other his populated works project people in the twenty-first century who appear homeless, without beliefs; without connection with each other and without an Ariadne thread that might provide some kind of escape. They are, however, often in a state of reflection indicating that they are not blind to the demands of balance and tension that besiege them. Even when his characters are in a state of action as portrayed in The Gathering this huge crowd is necessarily comprised of individuals that are not connecting with each other despite walking together behind a banner that might have unified them. Matassoni's paintings tell us a story of our times situated as we are in the midst of both man-made suburban worlds and those naturally present.

The shock occurs when he manages to combine both worlds seamlessly. The Road is a case in point. Artists do not usually paint a road, and although close inspection does indeed confirm that this road is town-bound, one's experience of it is far more expansive. This magical road, emanating all the colours of the sky-blue, pink, yellow, red and green, seems to be traveling to infinity (within the natural world) or nowhere (into town). Despite the throng of people moving snail-like beneath it the impression is one of absence, of space- desolate urban space- the people secondary to the buildings that appear more individualized than they. Their colourful, pastel luminosity dominates the scene. Similarly the still life that is the foreground to The Young Couple, and the smaller painting with its fruit, candles and TV controller have a vivacity that has left the people, engaged always it seems with either melancholic stares of disengagement or lost in a revelry that cannot, it seems, be accommodated in the outside world. The odalisque character on the couch, lounging in a Matisse guise, is also a still life but without the animation of the objects in front of her.

A vision of urban life as alienated is given a personalized experience in On the Balcony the protagonist has her back to the outside world aglow with buildings which have an aggressive presence serving to further underline the unhappiness or disengagement of the person. Working Back is a disturbing painting with the intensities of lights emerging from the sea and the sky outside, a cruel contrast with the offices within where workers are inanimate staring things. It is a mysterious fact for me that the Matassoni paintings that are most filled with human activity are the ones where they are absent. At the Water's Edge, a walk-way on the right, a bridge over head and the lights showing the way succeeds, as does Montmartre with its steps leading to the sky, in presenting a philosophical world of beauty and intention; the 'divine' immanence is a human one in that it anticipates the viewer's recognition. The piece in this exhibition that transfixes is Federation Square where the buildings take undeniable ascendancy. Matassoni's Italianesque, warm palette (the sky is pink, the concrete red) is not unlike Poussin's tertiary palette; Matassoni however has his own special way of bouncing colours around a canvas, interplaying the modern with the postmodern and succeeding in creating wondrous relations between object , colour, space and presence. The smaller paintings in the exhibition have an intimate European sensibility. Clearly finished pieces in themselves, these refined perceptions are carried into the larger works. Six of them are studies of the melancholic personality looking out to sea, looking at nothing in particular or simply being relentlessly alone. Alongside these people are the landscapes that suggest there is, despite the isolation , always choice and those choices, it is suggested, are best made away from town down pathways of other possibilities. These are indeed philosophical paintings alerting us to our terror and our joy.

Associate Professor Ann McCulloch is an Associate Head of Research of the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. McCulloch has published widely on philosophy, literature and aesthetics; Her most recent publication is The Dance of the nomad: The Selected Notes of A. D. Hope. In a book to be published later this year The Poetics of Australian Space, Sydney: UNSW Press, Barbara Holloway and Jennifer Rutherford (eds.) Ann McCulloch has written about Terry Matassoni's paintings.


NZArtMonthly – Urban Dislocation: the art of Terry Matassoni (2006)

The postmodern urban humanoid dwells in a configuration of boxes that extend beyond the horizon, beyond the frame.

Cities, a rapidly unfolding grid network, compulsively increase in size, entrapped in its nets of brick and mortar; we attempt to survive in a concrete jungle.

In the work of Terry Matassoni, the psychological human condition is expressed in the configuration of architectural structures that permeate the composition.

Functioning as metaphors or allegories the repetitive sameness in works like Suburbia, reflect identical windows like identical eyes that seem to allude to identical people with identical pain.

Just as De Chirico utilized Renaissance architecture as a surrealist device to evoke a sense of dream or unconscious states of mind, so too Matassoni uses architecture to reflect the emotional or psychological aspects of our mental climate.

Executed in a naive art style, flat colour conveys monumental figures like cardboard cut out people that stare vacantly into space.

Enacting the mundane repetitiousness of modern life, the characters are further articulated by black lines that rob them of any three dimensionality.

There is a sense of alienation and social dislocation that pervade these works, evidencing the trials and tribulations of urban consumer society, and the quest for identity in a mass media culture.