Rick Amor (born 3 March 1948 ) is an Australian artist and figurative painter. He was an Official War Artist for Australia.
Life and work
Rick Amor was born in
Frankston, Victoria
Frankston is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Frankston local government area. Frankston recorded a population of 37,331 at the 2021 census.
Due ...
, Australia. He has a certificate in art from the
Caulfield Institute of Technology, and Associate Diploma in Painting from the National Gallery School,
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
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He began exhibiting at the Joseph Brown gallery in 1974 and has shown annually at Niagara Galleries since 1983. Amor has entered 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, the editor ...
at over 10 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 ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
. In 1999 he was one of the first Australian artists to be appointed as the Official War Artist to East Timor
East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-west ...
by the Australian War Memorial, and the first since the end of the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
.
Over the course of his artistic career, Amor has held over 70 solo exhibitions and over 100 group shows. In 2013 a 30th Anniversary exhibition of his extended practice was held at Niagara Galleries. In 1990 McClelland Gallery curated a major survey exhibition of his paintings, which went on to tour various regional galleries in Victoria and South Australia throughout 1990 and 1991. An exhibition of his prints toured various regional galleries in Victoria and Tasmania
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between 1993 and 1994. ">/sup> In 1993 another exhibition staged by Bendigo Art Gallery toured Australia. Amor's most recent exhibitions include ''Rick Amor: Contemporary Romantic'' at Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide in 2017, ''Rick Amor: 21 Portraits'' at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra in 2014, ''Rick Amor: From Study to Painting'' in 2013 at Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Victoria, and an exhibition at the Australian Print Workshop in 2012. Recent significant group shows have included the 2017 ''Blue Chip XIX: The Collectors’ Exhibition,'' at Niagara Galleries, the Melbourne Art Fair
The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, colloquially referred to as "Jeff's Shed," is a group of three adjacent buildings next to the Yarra River in South Wharf, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The venues are ow ...
, Melbourne, and the Small Sculpture Fair at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery in 2013.
In 2005, Peter Berner
Peter may refer to:
People
* List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* Peter (given name)
** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church
* Peter (surname), a sur ...
interviewed Amor for a documentary about the Archibald Prize entitled ''Loaded Brush''. Major texts on Amor's work have also been published in the last twenty years, including Barry Pearce's ''100 Moments in Australian Painting'' (2014), Gary Catalano’s biography, ''The Solitary Watcher: Rick Amor and his Art'' (2001), and Gavin Fry’s monograph, ''Rick Amor''(2008.
Paintings
Rick Amor's work borrows heavily from the pictorial traditions of Symbolism
Symbolism or symbolist may refer to:
Arts
* Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism
** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries
** Russian sym ...
and Surrealism. The legacy of these art movements manifests within the poetic quality of Amor's style. Amor's handling of light and his alluring manipulation of depth of field in his paintings achieves a sustained sense of tension and mystery that insinuates a multiplicity of meanings. His works include psychologically potent symbolism and his landscapes in particular convey a disquieting atmosphere, with objects saturated by contrasting light and shadows. His major recurring subjects are the solitary watcher, figures at twilight, the vast emptiness of urban spaces and quiet mysterious interiors. Even throughout his journalistic works, such his war paintings of East Timor his works are captivating for their unfathomable subtexts.
Sebastian Smee wrote in a review of Amor's 2008 retrospective exhibition a
Heide Museum of Modern Art
that he was:
Sculpture
Since the early 1990s, Rick Amor has also incorporated sculpture into art practice. Amor typically works in the medium of bronze for his sculptural works. He begins the process of creating each mould at home, which he then has cast in foundry using the Lost-wax casting
Lost-wax casting (also called "investment casting", "precision casting", or ''cire perdue'' which has been adopted into English from the French, ) is the process by which a duplicate metal sculpture (often silver, gold, brass, or bronze) i ...
method. Amor's sculptures are object and figure based, and are often incredibly textural to achieve an impression rather than a replication of the subject.
Amor's skill in the medium of sculpture has been recognised by The National Gallery, Canberra who ha
purchased
a two-metre-high bronze sculpture of a dog – "a made-up dog, a survivor".
Moreover, in November 2007 Rick Amor won the prestigious $100,00
McClelland Sculpture Award
for his haunting work ''Relic''.
artsACT commissioned a version of ''Relic'' for the city of Canberra, which is in situ near the intersection of Childers Street and University Avenu
images
Collections
Rick Amor is represented in numerous private and permanent public collections. Australian public collections include National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
, Canberra; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
The 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 H ...
, Ballarat; Heide Museum of Modern Art
The Heide Museum of Modern Art, also known as Heide, is an art museum in Bulleen, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Established in 1981, the museum houses modern and contemporary art across three distinct exhibition buildings and is s ...
, Victoria; Geelong Gallery
State Library of Victoria
Castlemaine Art Museum
Castlemaine Art Museum is an Australian art gallery and museum in Castlemaine, Victoria in the Shire of Mount Alexander. It was founded in 1913. It is housed in a 1931 Art Deco neo-classical building constructed for the purpose, heritage-listed ...
; as well as numerous state, regional and university collections throughout Australia.
Awards
*2014 The Australian Print Workshop George Collie Memorial Award, The Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne
*2007 The McClelland Award, McClelland Gallery+Sculpture Park, Victoria
*2000 Awarded the Visual Arts/Craft Board London Studio, England
*1995 Awarded the Visual Arts/Craft Board Green Street Studio, New York
*1991 Awarded the Visual Arts/Craft Board Barcelona Studio, Spain
*1989 National Australia Bank Art Prize
*1987 Castlemaine Drawing Prize (Second Prize)
*1980 Artist in Residence, Victorian Trades Hall Council
*1975 Visual Arts Board Grant
*1968 National Gallery Traveling Scholarship
*1967 National Gallery Drawing Prize (shared)
*Hugh Ramsey Portrait Prize
References
Gavin Fry
(2008) ''Rick Amor'', Beagle Press. , .
* Gary Catalano (2001) ''The Solitary Watcher: Rick Amor and His Art'', Melbourne University Publishing. .
* Davida Allen
Davida Frances Allen (born 20 October 1951) is an Australian painter, filmmaker and writer.
Early life and education
Davida Allen was born on 20 October 1951 in Charleville, Queensland.
She studied under Betty Churcher at the Stuartholme Schoo ...
, Rick Amor, Stephanie Burns et al. (2000) ''The Australian Drawing'', Australian National University.
External links
The artist's website
*Rick Amor: An Online Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints by Irena Zdanowicz - http://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/
Niagara Galleries
Art Right Now
Rick Amor at Australian Art
Work in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
A retrospective exhibition at the Heide Museum of Modern Art
Images of 60 prints by Rick Amor
Liverpool Street Gallery
* A single mind: Rick Amor 22 March – 13 July 2008, Heide Museum of Modern Art. Education Kit
Part A pdf
Part B pdf
Part c pdf
{{DEFAULTSORT:Amor, Rick
Australian painters
20th-century Australian sculptors
Australian printmakers
Living people
1948 births
Australian war artists
21st-century Australian sculptors
Artists from Melbourne
People from Frankston, Victoria