Angus McDonald (born 1961) is an Australian contemporary

visual artist The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts al ...

, refugee advocate, columnist, and documentary

filmmaker Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...

Early life and education

Angus McDonald was born in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

in 1961. He earned an Economics degree at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

, and later (1993–5) studied painting at the

Julian Ashton Art School The Julian Ashton Art School was established by Julian Ashton in 1890 as the "Academy Julian", (perhaps a reference to the Académie Julian in Paris) has been an influential art school in Australia. For a long time it was known as the Sydney Art ...

. He travelled to the small island of

Leros Leros ( el, Λέρος) is a Greek island and municipality in the Dodecanese in the southern Aegean Sea. It lies (171 nautical miles) from Athens's port of Piraeus, from which it can be reached by an 9-hour ferry ride or by a 45-minute flight fr ...

, Greece and lived and painted there from 1996 to 1999. In 2000, he was accepted as a student at the

Florence Academy of Fine Arts The Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze ("academy of fine arts of Florence") is an instructional art academy in Florence, in Tuscany, in central Italy. It was founded by Cosimo I de' Medici in 1563, under the influence of Giorgio Vasari. ...

in Italy. Upon his return to Australia in 2001, he settled in the

Lennox Head Lennox Head is a seaside village in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, situated on the stretch of coast between Byron Bay and Ballina in Ballina Shire local government area. It had a population of 7,741 in the 2016 Aus ...

region in

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

. In 2003, he settled in Lennox Head itself.

Art

McDonald was a visual artist, mainly a painter (although he didn't use a paintbrush until he was 31), for around 25 years before he started making films, from around 2017. His works have been avidly collected and exhibited internationally, including a 2007 London exhibition which showed his work after painting an

Antarctic The Antarctic ( or , American English also or ; commonly ) is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau and other ...

expedition with the

Mawson's Huts Mawson's Huts are the collection of buildings located at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, in the far eastern sector of the Australian Antarctic Territory, some 3000 km south of Hobart. The buildings were erected and occupied by the Australas ...

expedition. He returned to Antarctica in 2008 and 2009 as an

artist in residence Artist-in-residence, or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs which involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs which provide artists with space a ...

for Aurora Expeditions. He is renowned for his

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of Terrestrial ecoregion, land, its landforms, and how they integrate with Nature, natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionar ...

and

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

paintings.

Archibald Prize finalist

McDonald's portraits have been finalists for the

Archibald Prize The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, J. F. Archib ...

art competition six times. *In 2009, McDonald painted artist Zoe MacDonell *In 2011, he painted Ann Lewis *In 2012, McDonald entered a portrait of artist Tim Maguire *In 2015, a portrait by McDonald of singer

Abbe May Abbe Joanna May (born 19 July 1983) is an Australian singer-songwriter, musician and human rights campaigner. From 2002 she pursued her music career in Perth-based groups, The Fuzz, Abbe May and the Rockin' Pneumonia, and The Devil & Abbe May. I ...

was a finalist *In 2019, he painted lawyer, writer, and former refugee

Mariam Veiszadeh Mariam Veiszadeh is an Afghan-born Australian lawyer and writer known for her anti-racism campaigns. Early life and education Veiszadeh was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1984. In 1988, when Veiszadeh was four years old, her family fled Afghanis ...

*In 2020, McDonald's portrait of

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

Iranian writer and journalist and former Manus refugee,

Behrouz Boochani Behrouz Boochani ( fa, بهروز بوچانی; born 23 July 1983) is a Iranian Kurdistan, Kurdish-Iranian journalist, human rights defender, writer and film producer living in New Zealand. He was held in the Australian-run Manus Regional Proce ...

, was selected for the People's Choice Award

Film and social advocacy

In 2016, McDonald became interested in

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

and

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

issues after travelling across the

Greek islands Greece has many islands, with estimates ranging from somewhere around 1,200 to 6,000, depending on the minimum size to take into account. The number of inhabited islands is variously cited as between 166 and 227. The largest Greek island by a ...

(including Leros, where he had lived a couple of decades earlier) to see how the local communities dealt with the huge numbers of

asylum seeker An asylum seeker is a person who leaves their country of residence, enters another country and applies for asylum (i.e., international protection) in that other country. An asylum seeker is an immigrant who has been forcibly displaced and mi ...

s who had arrived in 2015 and 2016 via the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...

, mainly from

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

via

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. He was struck by the more humane way that the Greeks treated these huge numbers of migrants, compared with the

Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government i ...

's treatment of the relatively few who had arrived by boat in Australian territorial waters. McDonald established a social justice project called Howling Eagle, which advocates for humane treatment and raises public awareness of asylum seekers. The project began releasing videos on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

in 2018 under the title "Philoxenia", which is Greek for "extending hospitality and friendship to the stranger". McDonald was ambassador for World Vision's ''KidsOffNauru Campaign'' and is on the Sydney Committee for

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

Australia and Asia.

''Manus''

In 2019, McDonald's 13-minute short film ''Manus'' was released. It details the stand-off between the

s in the

Manus Island detention centre The Manus Regional Processing Centre, or Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (MIRCP), was one of a number of offshore Australian immigration detention facilities. The centre was located on the PNG Navy Base Lombrum (previously a Royal Aus ...

and the authorities, which occurred at the end of 2017 around the time the detention facility was closed. In total, asylum seekers were held in the Manus Island detention centre for six years. The film was shot by Australian journalist Olivia Rousset and uses only clips from interviews with the men to create the narrative. It includes a poem called "Manus Poem" written and narrated in

Farsi Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken an ...

, a prominent Kurdish Iranian former asylum seeker held on

Manus Island Manus Island is part of Manus Province in northern Papua New Guinea and is the largest of the Admiralty Islands. It is the fifth-largest island in Papua New Guinea, with an area of , measuring around . Manus Island is covered in rugged jungles w ...

. ''Manus'' was awarded Best Documentary at the 2019 St. Kilda Film Festival and Best Documentary at the 2020 FIFO (Festival International du Film Documentaire Océanien) in

Tahiti Tahiti (; Tahitian ; ; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Austr ...

. It was an official selection for the 2020

Byron Bay International Film Festival The Byron Bay Film Festival is a popular AACTA Awards accredited independent awards-based film event held in the late Australian summer at the Byron Community & Cultural Centre, in the coastal town of Byron Bay. The festival was established in ...

and the 2020

Aesthetica Short Film Festival The Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) is an international film festival which takes place annually in York, England, at the beginning of November. Founded in 2011, it is a celebration of independent film from around the world, and an outle ...

(ASFFest) in

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

, UK, qualifying the film for entry into the 2020 Oscars Documentary Short category by the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion ...

Writing

In 2020, McDonald began writing a weekly social commentary column for the ''Northern Rivers Review''.

References

External links

* * Includes details of ''Manus''. {{DEFAULTSORT:McDonald, Angus 21st-century Australian artists Australian documentary filmmakers 1961 births Artists from Sydney Living people University of Sydney alumni