Julian Dashper

Fine Arts, Sydney is presenting an exhibition of works from the 1990s by Julian Dashper.

This exhibition focuses on two works from the middle years of the decade, representing an emblematic period of Dashper’s practice. Both are abstract works in vinyl on drumheads: a “painting” and a “sculpture”. ‘Untitled’ (1995) is a black star applied in vinyl to the centre of a drum skin, and is shown on the wall. ‘Untitled’ (1996) is coloured vinyl circles on two drum skins, mounted on the kick drum in a five-piece drum kit.

Julian Dashper is amongst one of Australasia’s most influential contemporary artists, known for the work he made in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s that ranged across painting, sculpture, photography, audio recordings, printed matter, and video. His work has always been to do with the subject of art, and the ways that art and art ideas are made and circulated. It focuses on the histories and theories of abstraction, conceptualism and minimalism, and is often concerned with connections between art and popular culture. Recurring themes in his work are the persistent orthodoxies of regionalism and internationalism, the experience of art in reproduction, readings of international modernism in Australia and New Zealand, and the conditions and circumstances that have informed art making and art history in Australasia.

Julian Dashper (1960-2009) lived in Auckland and travelled extensively, maintaining an especially close connection with Australia since first travelling to Sydney in 1979. Dashper’s work was first shown in a solo exhibition in 1980, and his work has been exhibited in Australia since 1987. He was an enthusiastic and prolific maker of exhibitions who showed work throughout his career at museums, public institutions, galleries, artist-run spaces, and alternative venues in Australasia, Europe, and North America.

This is Fine Arts, Sydney’s second solo exhibition of the work of Julian Dashper, and is made with the support of the Julian Dashper Estate.

9 July — 17 August, 2019