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Paper Pusher
Philip Faulks
11-22 July 2017
hours:
Tuesday – Friday 11am to 5pm,
Saturday 12pm to 4pm
admission: Free
Faulks’ engagement with paper is further deepened to explore bureaucracy, institutional power, and the influence of organisations on our everyday lives and our sense of self.
Philip Faulks continues to develop his intricate large scale paper cuts and drawings to explore personal history, ancestry and psychology in his latest exhibition Paper Pusher. In an age where the boundaries of the imagination appear to be increasingly policed by the protocols of compliance, Faulks’ engagement with paper is further deepened to explore bureaucracy, institutional power, and the influence of organisations on our everyday lives and our sense of self.
Through his assured use of pattern, ornament, repetition and symbolism combined with cutting, incising and mark making that references both Western and Eastern traditions, Faulks subtly draws our attention to the ambiguous qualities of paper. Both as a transient material of little consequence, and a robust repository of knowledge, easily preserved and easily destroyed.
Paper Pusher follows on from Faulks’ successful solo exhibition There’s A Ghost In My House at JavaArts Gallery in Phnom Penh in January, and in March Bluestonia Paperhood, a collaboration with Chinese artist Zhou Bing of paper cut based paste up images that was shown on the streets Melbourne to great acclaim.
Paper Pusher is generously supported by The Australia Council for the Arts.
Philip Faulks was born in England and came to Australia in 1976 at the age of 17. He attended the Victorian College of the Arts graduating in 1980 and a Master of Art at RMIT University in 1999.
He has been an exhibiting artist since 1981. Since that time his practice has embraced elements of drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture. This has seen him undertake 14 Solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and China, including ‘Paper Culture’, a survey of ten years of work at Cangzhou Museum in China in 2015.
He has also participated in more than 100 group exhibitions in Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and Italy including major institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and Museum of Contemporary Art amongst many other public and private institutions and galleries.
He is represented in many public collections including the Australian National Gallery Canberra, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Bendigo Art Gallery, Geelong Art Gallery, Mornington Peninsula regional Gallery and the Chinese Government. He also has work in private collections in Australia, America, Japan, England, Ireland, and France.
He has received a number of commissions including a portable mural for the Playbox Theatre at the Malthouse theatre complex, painting an artist’s tram, designing the floral clock and other flowerbeds in the Melbourne Botanical gardens and a relief sculpture in the Brunswick (Vic) library Atrium.
His work has appeared in and/or been written about in many publications including the Australian, Melbourne Age, Sydney Morning Herald. Melbourne Sun, Singapore Straits Times, El Gazzeto Venice, World Sculpture News, Art in Australia, Artlink, Tension Magazine, Trouble Magazine, Vogue Australia, regional and local publications as well as numerous catalogue essays and electronic media in Australia, Vietnam and China.
He has also received several awards and support including the Australia Council, the City of Melbourne, and more recently completed residencies in NSW and Vietnam. In 2016 he received an Australia Council new work grant to make and exhibit work on and with paper in Cambodia and Australia in 2017.