The Third Australian Biennale of Reductive Art, a satellite event of Seventh International Biennale of Non Objective Art, will be held at the UTS Tower from 5 – 28 January 2024.
The Third Australian Biennale of Reductive Art, a satellite event of Seventh International Biennale of Non Objective Art, will be held at the UTS Tower from 5 – 28 January 2024. The event is curated by UTS Lecturer in the School of Design Dr Mark Titmarsh and Dr Billy Gruner.
The unique Biennale of Reductive and Non Objective Art was founded 14 years ago by leading French artist Roland Orepuk, who is also a regular visitor and contributor to the Australian context of contemporary art.
The subtitle of the Australian component of the Biennale is a reference Ian Burn’s painting Blue Reflex made in 1966. Ian Burn was a foundation conceptual artist, curator and writer who spent the first part of his career in the 1960s and 70s in London and New York working collaboratively with the group Art & Language, whose members included, Joseph Kosuth, Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden.
In the 1970s and 80s, having returned to Australia he became involved in the Art Workers Union championing artists’ rights as well as working for Union Media Services providing promotional designs for the Union Movement. His combination of critical art works and politics led to an enduring practice where thinking and the visual are intimately and productively linked.
Consequently ‘Blue Reflex’, on loan from Avril Burn, will form the visual and conceptual centre of the Australian component of the Biennale. 20 or more Australian artists have been selected on the basis of a line of development from Ian Burn to the present, so as to indicate a critical post-conceptual outcome in contemporary Australian art.
Overall the exhibition features paintings, sculpture, performance and sound art, supported by artist talks, curator talks, curators notes and a catalogue, in hard copy and accessible online.
The Biennale is typically a fully independent program without any financial contribution from institutions, managed and curated by the contributing artists.
