Julian Dashper / John Nixon: The World Is Your Studio
Texts by Robin Stoney, Ben Curnow, Mark Kirby
Published by The Gus Fisher Gallery, The University of Auckland, The Kenneth Myers Centre, 2005
48p, color, softcover, 8.25 x 5.75 inches
ISBN: 0-476-01110-8
About Julian Dashper
Julian Dashper was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on February 29, 1960 (leap year day) and died in Auckland on July 30, 2009. During his brief but influential career, he mounted more than 140 solo exhibitions of his work worldwide, including in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United States.
His major New Zealand exhibitions include Julian Dashper’s Greatest Hits, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (1992); The Big Bang Theory, Artspace (1994); and The Twist, Waikato Museum of Art and History (1998). In 2005-2006, a mid-career survey of Dashper’s work, Midwestern Unlike You and Me, curated by Christopher Cook and David Raskin, traveled throughout the United States, including to the Sioux City Art Center, Sioux City, Iowa; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska; and Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, Kansas.
In 2010 here at the gallery, we mounted the well-received, posthumous solo exhibition Julian Dashper (1960-2009): It Is Life, which marked the one-year anniversary of the artist’s passing and featured a single artwork entitled Future Call, as well as written tributes to him by more than 70 artists and others internationally. Dashper’s work was also presented in our survey exhibitions MINUS SPACE at MoMA/PS1, NYC (2008-2009) and MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca: Panorama de 31 artistas internacionales in Oaxaca, Mexico (2012), as well as the group exhibitions Neither Here nor There but Anywhere and Everywhere (2012) and On Paper (2016), among other projects.
In 2001, Dashper was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and was an artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. His work is included in public collections internationally, including the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery; Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin; Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington; Robert McDougall Gallery, Christchurch; Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui; Suter Gallery, Nelson (all New Zealand); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany.
About John Nixon
John Nixon (b. 1949, Sydney, Australia; d. 2020, Melbourne, Australia) is one of the most renowned abstract artists of his generation. Since his first solo exhibition in Melbourne in 1973, he has mounted hundreds of solo exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States. In 1982, he was selected by Germano Celant to represent Australia at Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany.
Nixon’s work is included in public and private collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (NYC), Australian National Gallery (Canberra), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), Heide Museum of Modern Art (Melbourne), TarraWarra Museum of Art (Melbourne), Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth), Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane), Auckland Art Gallery (Auckland, New Zealand), National Gallery of Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea), Museum Sztuki (Lodz, Poland), Foire National d’Art Contemporain (Paris, France), Herning Kunstmuseumm (Denmark), Kunstmuseum Esberg (Denmark), Stiftung fur Konkrete Kunst (Reutlingen, Germany), Daimler Collection (Berlin, Germany), and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (Switzerland), among many others.
Nixon is the recipient of the Australian Council Fellowship Award (2001) and the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award (1999). During the late 1960s, he studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School and Preston Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.