13 February - 1 March 2020
about the exhibition
David Frazer’s work explores the themes of truth, despair and the emotional and fragile state of the human condition with his characteristic imagination and wit. In this exhibition, David deviates from his recurrent theme of the male protagonist, omitting the lonely, isolated figure altogether. Instead, these works are centred around individual trees and tree trunks, similarly isolated against a crowded tangle of nature. David depicts these trees with the withered and worn appearance of a man marked by a lifetime’s worth of scars. As David says “Tangled wood, tangled life. Wounded wood, the wounded damaged, flawed man. It’s all essentially the same old thing; just confused, hopeless, exhausted, bewildered men.” Although David’s work is typically Australian, the story is universal, drawing tensions between survival and hope, vitality and emptiness in images that are both poignant, mildly unsettling but entirely captivating.
Born in Victoria, David Frazer graduated from the Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne with a Fine Art degree specialising in painting. In 1996 he achieved an Honours degree from Monash University specialising in Printmaking and in 2000, gained his Master of Arts. In 2007 he was the major prize winner in the International Print Bienniale, Guanlan, China and in the same year was featured on the ABC’s documentary series ‘Artist at Work’. In 2013 he won the open section acquisitive prize, Silk Cut Award, for his major work ‘Waiting for Rain’ which has also been included in a number of other awards and prize exhibitions. His works are represented widely across Australia and overseas in collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian War Memorial, State Library of Victoria and Chiang Mai Contemporary Art Museum (Thailand).
