3 - 19 March 2022
about the exhibition
David Frazer’s artwork explores the themes of truth, despair, love and the emotional and fragile state of the human condition. With his characteristic imagination and wit, David depicts figures in the landscape through finely detailed wood engravings, lithographs, etchings, paintings and, sometimes, bronze sculptures. He is a master printmaker and his extraordinary technical skills move seamlessly through printmaking mediums. David is also inspired by music and in this exhibition, Nick Cave’s tender and deeply moving ballad, ‘Love Letter’, is the inspiration behind this recent body of prints. Although David’s work is typically Australian, the story he portrays is universal, drawing tensions between survival, hope and love, vitality and emptiness in images that are poignant, charming and entirely captivating. Not one to give too much away however, David concedes that after all, “being happy and optimistic all of the time isn’t funny or tragic and wouldn’t make for very interesting art.”
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. David’s work has been highly commended in the Megalo International Print Prize in Canberra in 2019, as well as being a finalist in the National Works on Paper, at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery in Victoria in 2020. 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).
