CHARLES BLACKMAN 
(12 August 1928 – 20 August 2018)

CHARLES BLACKMAN is a major figure in Australian art.  Two significant themes in his work have been the Schoolgirl and Alice in Wonderland. Deep shadows and the accentuation of his figure's eyes occur throughout Blackman's works with a pervasive sense of melancholy.  Blackman was largely self-taught.  He was a co-founder of the Melbourne Contemporary Art Society in 1953 and one of seven who were responsible for the Antipodean Manifesto - a reaction against what they saw as the meteoric rise of abstract expressionism and non-figurative art in Australia and its intolerance of figurative painting.  In 1951 Blackman married a poet, Barbara Patterson, who became a lasting presence in his work. Blackman has won many awards including the Rowney prize for drawing (1959), the Helena Rubenstein Scholarship (1960), the Dyeson Endowment Award and the Crouch Prize. Blackman's work was included in the Whitechapel Open Exhibition in 1961 and Tate Gallery exhibitions of Australian Art 1962-63. 

Blackman was awarded an OBE in 1997, for his services to art. His work is held in institutional and private galleries nationally and internationally.

DAVID BOYD 
(23 August 1924 - 10 November 2011)

DAVID BOYD is a major figure in Australian art.  Boyd was a figurative painter, ceramic sculptor and potter.  His art stems from a long family tradition of artistic talent. Acclaimed as a potter in the fifties and sixties, he began his career as a painter in 1957 with a series of symbolic paintings on Australian explorers. Since then, David Boyd has painted several major series of works, including his powerful Trial series, the Tasmanian Aborigines, the Wanderer and Exiles series. Picturing innocence and evil, destruction and creation, his works convey mythical and universal themes. Having won significant international recognition, David Boyd was invited by the Commonwealth Institute of Art, London, to hold a retrospective of paintings at their Art Gallery in 1969. David Boyd is represented in the Australian National Gallery, all State and many regional galleries; the Mertz collection, USA; the Power collection, Sydney; and many major international galleries and private collections in Australia and overseas.

 

DIRK KRUITKOF
 

Sydney Australian born and based, Dirk Kruithof studied a Fine Arts Diploma at Meadowbank and Kogarah Tafe (1999 – 2001), Majoring in Painting. 

His subjects are language and information, the urban environment, words signs and symbols, beauty and decay. 
 

Dirk uses photographs, sketches, the net, music, print media, and the big bad city as material for his dense and chaotic 'maximalist' aesthetic. A kind of Pop Expressionism often incorporating elements of text or graffiti-like marks are a feature of his current work.
 

Influenced by Artists like Christopher Wool, Basquiat, Kippenberger, Cullen,  Ramellzee, Dubuffet, Ian Fairweather, Lee Krasner and others. 
 

Dirk has been exhibiting regularly since 2005.

JULIAN D YOUNG has worked with a musical ensemble Deprogram, creating video for live performance, television and the internet for festivals that include; Electrofringe, Vivd, Beams, Underbelly, TINA, MCA London and many other independent cultural events.  His work extends to experimental productions for Laureate Productions, in video work for musical interpretations of Kenneth Slessor's, Darlinghurst Nights and a collection of Australian love poems, Love at the Bar, performed at the Sydney Writers Festival.  He has worked with Lanie Lane, The New Christs and is a current member of Hoax Trinket, engaging in music/video explorations.  His work can be viewed online under his web presence pseudonym dvd2u.