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David Armitage
Australian Postwar & Contemporary painter living in the UK
Born Tasmania 1943. Living in New Zealand from 1967-1973 afterwhich he settles in Great Britian.
Responding to a student questionnaire, the artist wrote: “I listen to music as I paint: I love the musical space as it breathes and floats. At times the equivalent can be rather like painting on the sky or on water, keeping company with Sibelius and Ligeti, or inspired by the sublime music of Schubert and my beloved Bruckner. Sailing above the musical thing is the release of colour – which is a passion. The primacy of colour is everything to me in painting, and that is what I respond to in recent art history, the works of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard, Matisse, Miro and the Americans. I remember looking at Rothko when I was a student. I’d never seen anything so wonderful. As someone said, the paintings appear to be lit from within.
"I find places of pilgrimage and worship very powerful, no matter what the reason for their existence. Equally, as with other painters, I am fascinated by Memento Mori. Of course death can also be celebrated as in the wonderful Festival of the Dead in Mexico.
"A childhood passion for the work of Francisco Goya and a parallel fascination and horror of the Spanish inquisition has never left me. The plight of the victims reverberates through history into our own times. Death in all its forms remains much the same.
"There are things that I celebrate simply because they are what they are; glorious in their own right. Prayer rugs and prayer flags, the Pacific Ocean, so familiar from my childhood in Tasmania. Tribal art, the vast Australian landscape, much of it scorched by the elements, or the fascination of other landscapes destroyed by retreating armies. And all those Cerberus-like guardian figures from myths and legends."
Exhibition
1968 - 1978 Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland.
1971 Palmerston North Art Gallery.
1973 Survey exhibition touring N.Z. Public Galleries.
1988 Beldesign, Cambridge.
1989 Quay Arts Centre, Newport; One One Nine Gallery,London.
1992 ADT College, London.
1993 Duncan Campbell Contemporary Art, London.
1994 Christ Hospital, Horsham.
1995 Atlantis, London.
1996 Mitre Gallery, Chichester; The Maltings, Farnham; The Hawth Arts Centre, Crawley.
1997 Windsor Arts Centre; Hanover Gallery, Liverpool; Seagate, Dundee; Star Gallery, Lewes; Mappin Gallery, Sheffield.
1998 Trinity Arts Centre,Tunbridge Wells.
1999 Rye Festival Artist
1999 Art 2000: Listening to Bruckner:Exhibition in Guildford Cathedral
2000 Bridgeview Office Complex, Aberdeen; Modern Artists Gallery, Oxon; Parkview Fine Paintings, Bristol; Bishop Phillpott Gallery, Truro
2003 Steading Gallery, near Kirkcudbright
2004 Modern Artists Gallery Whitchurch on Thames, Oxon.
2005 Trinity Arts Tunbridge Wells
2006 & 2008 The Designs Gallery, Castle Douglas
Group Exhibitions:
1966-78 Many group exhibitions throughout New Zealand.
1972 Bonython Gallery, Sydney.
1975 New York; Young Artists 75.
1991 John Gruzelier Modern and Contemporary Art, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex.
1998/9 Rye Gallery, Star Gallery, Lewes: Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne.
2001 Sussex Artists, Abbeville Festival, France; Parkview Fine Paintings, Bristol.
2002 Bettie Morton Gallery, Brixton; Duncan and Jordanstone College, Dundee.
2003 Australian High Commission, London.
2008 Farley’s Farm Gallery, Chiddingly, East Sussex.
2009 Oxford Union debate on conceptual art.
2010 Modern Artists Gallery, Oxon.
2011 Farley’s Farm Gallery, Chiddingly, East Sussex.
2012 Gallery Gora, Montreal.
To be updated soon