NICOLE KELLY
BIOGRAPHY
Nicole Kelly has a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales (2020) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the National Art School (2009). She has held solo exhibitions since 2012 in Sydney, Melbourne and Hazelhurst Regional Gallery (2013, 2017 & 2022).
Kelly has been included in group exhibitions in Australia, France and Singapore since 2008. She is the recipient of the Viktoria Marinov Scholarship for female artists (2021), Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship at the Art Gallery of NSW (2009), Gruner Art Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW (2008), Robert Le Gay Breton Drawing Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW (2007), High Commendation, Percival Drawing Prize (2020), the Hurford Harwood Portrait Prize (2018), Royal Art Society of NSW Young Artist Award (2018), Hazelhurst Art on Paper young artist award (2016), 2D award for excellence, Manning Prize (2015) and Hazelhurst Regional Gallery Art on Paper Local Artist Award (2011).
Kelly has been a finalist in the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW (2015), The Grace Cossington Smith Art Prize (2022), Portia Geach Memorial Award, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2105 & 2014), the NSW Parliament Plein Air Prize (2016), Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing (2016) and the Mosman Art Prize (2015). She has undertaken international residencies including the NG Creative Residency, Eygalières, France (2020 & 2017), AADK, Murcia, Spain (2016) and Cite Internationale Des Arts Artist in Residence Program, Paris, France (2010). Kelly's work is held in public, university and private collections in Australia and internationally.
ARTIST CV
DOWNLOAD PDF
PAST EXHIBITION
STILL DAYS
14 JUNE TO 1 JULY 2023
The series of new paintings included in the exhibition Still Days reflects on our sensitive and binding relationships with the landscape and tender love of the land.
Motivated by a sensitivity to the passing of time and primed with personal experience, the painting reveals an ongoing attempt to portray reality in a way that liaises not with literal representation but feeling, memory and thought.
The paintings aim to challenge any inclination to see the landscape as fixed, dispersing familiar representations of the landscape within a field of colour, mark and line. Areas of intricately mixed and subtly altered colour are dispersed across the picture plane to create optical tremors and the flux of the landscape. The image is at times composed, and at other times ruptured into parts and fragments, dispersing multiple entry points across the picture plane.
I am interested in exploring a compositional density and a compression of space, in a way that feels all-consuming, yet passive and gentle at the same time. Within the paintings, imagery tips in and out of focus. Abrupt shifts in surface textures interrupt the image, skies press forward in a reversal of atmospheric perspective and areas lift up from their proper pictorial location. Paint is dragged in thin bands across the plane and also buried, thick and congealed under the surface. The works experiment with exposed sections of coloured ground and negative space to throw the overlaid marks into high relief. Deliberately effaced edges alternate with strong line work in the paintings, disturbing a sense of literal and representational logic.
With large figures looming in the foreground of many of these paintings, the paintings mull over human impact as a catalyst of environmental crisis whilst also situating humanity, and our love of the natural world as a bastion of hope. The handling of paint in the figurative elements is slightly at odds with the surroundings, marking our fragile reality.
Nicole Kelly, 2023
WORKS
CONTACT GALLERY FOR PRICES & AVAILABILITY
NEWS
NICOLE KELLY FINALIST IN THE 2024 MUSWELLBROOK ART PRIZE
Nicole Kelly is a finalist in the 2024 Muswellbrook Art Prize with her work ‘Solastalgia’ . Established in 1958, the Muswellbrook Art Prize is one of the most celebrated prizes for painting in regional Australia. Astute adjudication of the Prize over the years has yielded an excellent collection of modern and contemporary Australian paintings, works…
NICOLE KELLY FINALIST IN GRACE COSSINGTON SMITH ART AWARD 2024
Nicole Kelly is a finalist in the Grace Cossington Smith Art Award 2024 . The award is sponsored by Abbotsleigh school and commemorates one of its alumnae, Grace Cossington Smith, who is known as a pioneer of modernist painting in Australia. The Grace Cossington Smith Gallery is a public gallery developing a collection with a…
NICOLE KELLY FINALIST IN HAZELHURST ART ON PAPER AWARD 2023
Nicole Kelly is exhibited as a finalist in the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2023 The biennial Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award is a significant national exhibition that aims to elevate the status of work on paper while supporting and promoting artists working with this medium. Exhibition current to the 12 of November Image Nicole…
NICOLE KELLY EXHIBITED IN SALON DES REFUSÉS 2023 AT S.H. ERVIN GALLERY
Nicole Kelly is exhibited in the Salon des Refusés 2023 at S.H. Ervin Gallery until 23 July . The Salon des Refusés was initiated by the S.H. Ervin Gallery in 1992. Each year the selection panel is invited to go behind the scenes of the judging process for the annual Archibald Prize for portraiture and…