marion borgelt artwork

marion borgelt

artist in residence 2007

Marion is a significant Sydney artist with artworks in 35 major public collections in Australia and overseas, including the Auckland Museum of Contemporary Art, NZ, Los Angeles County Museum, US, National Gallery of Australia, and all of the Australian state art collections. Marion also has artworks in a further 19 corporate collections, such as the Holmes a Court Collection and Macquarie Bank. She has received many significant art awards. Most recently Marion was the recipient of a two-year Australia Council Fellowship (2001–03). In 1996 she was the first Australian artist awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Art Fellowship and in 1989 she was awarded a fellowship from the French Government for living and working in Paris where she consequently spent eight years. Marion was also awarded a Peter Brown Memorial Travelling Art Scholarship for study in New York (1979-80) and in 1976 received the Harry S Gill Medal as most outstanding final year student, South Australian School of Art. This is her first solo exhibition in Perth.

Marion draws inspiration from subjects such as semiotics, language and phenomenology to create a personal visual vocabulary rich in metaphor and dualities. Her paintings, sculptures and installations harness powerful visual forms. Her Liquid light canvas constructions reference the pulsing light of the sun, and a fluid optical illusion is evoked as the viewer passes by. A more tranquil installation of books, Cryptologist’s memoir, focuses on symbols sourced from archaic languages. Her work suggests connections between culture and nature, between the constructed world and the organic world, between microcosm and macrocosm and the duality of light and dark. Marion works with a wide range of materials, including bees-wax, canvas, felt, pigment, stainless steel, wood, stone and organic matter.