Rick Amor - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Rick Amor is an Australian artist and figurative painter. He was an official war artist.

Life and work

Rick Amor was born in Frankston, Victoria

Frankston, Victoria

Frankston is a suburb within the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area in Victoria, Australia. It is located 40 km southeast of the state capital Melbourne at the southernmost edge of Greater Melbourne, near the beginnings of the Mornington Peninsula...

, Australia. He has a certificate in art from the Caulfield

Caulfield, Victoria

Caulfield is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 12 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Glen Eira...

Institute of Technology, and Associate Diploma in Painting from the National Gallery School, Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

.

He began exhibiting at the Joseph Brown

Joseph Brown (artist)

Joseph Brown, AO, OBE was an Australian artist and art collector.Brown was born in Poland in 1918 and migrated to Australia in 1933 at the age of fifteen, settling in Melbourne. He trained initially as an artist but after returning from war service in 1945 became increasingly involved in the...

gallery in 1974. He has entered the Archibald Prize

Archibald Prize

The Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919...

at least 11 times and been exhibited nine times. He has been the recipient of several Australia Council studio residencies, allowing him to work in London, New York and Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

. In 1999 he was one of the first Australian artists to be appointed as the Official War Artist to East Timor

East Timor

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...

by the Australian War Memorial

Australian War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial is Australia's national memorial to the members of all its armed forces and supporting organisations who have died or participated in the wars of the Commonwealth of Australia...

, and the first since the end of the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

.

Rick has held over 40 solo exhibitions since first exhibiting at Joseph Brown Gallery in 1974 and has shown annually at Niagara Galleries for the past 20 years. A major survey exhibition of his paintings was curated by McClelland Gallery in 1990 and toured various regional galleries in Victoria and South Australia

South Australia

South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

throughout 1990 and 1991. An exhibition of his prints toured various regional galleries in Victoria and Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

1993-4. In 1993 another exhibition mounted by Bendigo Art Gallery

Bendigo Art Gallery

Bendigo Art Gallery in Bendigo, founded in 1887, is one of Australia’s oldest and largest regional art galleries. The Bendigo Art Gallery hosts Australia's richest open painting prize, the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, worth $50,000, which was launched in 2003.- Prizes :* Arthur Guy Memorial...

toured Australia.

He still lives and works in Melbourne.

He was interviewed in the 2005 Peter Berner

Peter Berner

Peter Berner is an Australian comedian, radio and television presenter, probably best known as host of television's The Einstein Factor.-Comedy:He has been involved in the Australian comedy scene since the 1990s...

documentary about the Archibald Prize called Loaded Brush.

Paintings

His work borrows heavily from the pictorial inheritance of Symbolism and Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

. There is always a poetic mystery and sense of menace, even in apparently journalistic work, such as the East Timor paintings. His major themes are the solitary watcher, figures at twilight, the vast emptiness of urban spaces and quiet mysterious interiors. His works resonate with powerful symbolism, and his landscapes in particular are full of disquieting atmosphere, with objects bathed in half light and shadows.

A Sebastian Smee, a reviewer of Amor's latest retrospective exhibition, concluded that he was

Sculpture

Since the early '90s, he has also incorporated sculpture in his repertoire, generally bronze figures which he moulds at home, then has cast in foundry using the lost wax method. The National Gallery, Canberra, has purchased a two-metre-high bronze sculpture of a dog - "a made-up dog, a survivor".

In November 2007 Rick Amor won the prestigious $100,000 McClelland Sculpture Award for his haunting work Relic.

Collections

Rick Amor is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...

, Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

, the National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery (Australia)

The National Portrait Gallery of Australia is a collection of portraits of prominent Australians that are important in their field of endeavour or whose life sets them apart as an individual of long-term public interest...

, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery

Ballarat Fine Art Gallery

Art Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest and largest regional art gallery in Australia. Established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by the citizens of Ballarat both the building and part of its collection is listed on the Victorian Heritage Registerand by the National Trust of Victoria.The...

and numerous state, regional and university collections throughout Australia.

External links

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