STAFF PROFILE
Dr. Peter Westwood
Peter is a Senior Lecturer and the Program Manager of the School of Art Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) Honours program.
Peter is an artist, curator and arts writer. His art practice has primarily been focused within the idiom of painting, however, he also works with video, drawing, installation and collage. For many years he has focused equally on the complementary relationships of artist, writer and curator.
He has held group and individual exhibitions in a range of public and commercial galleries throughout Australia. His work is included in permanent museum and regional gallery collections, along with corporate and private collections. Peter has also curated two to three annual exhibition projects for the past 20 years in Australia, as well as periodically overseas.
In 2004, Peter established the School of Art International Artist in Residence Program, which he coordinated and managed for six years until 2012. Prior to this, he established and formed Project Space and Spare Room Gallery for the School of Art in 1995, which he coordinated and managed for nine years.
Research
Peter’s PhD research project is titled 'Painting as a marker of change'.
The research is based in an examination of capacity of the idiom of painting to reflect mutability and to form as a way of revealing or describing perpetual change. It investigates the capacity of the idiom to provide agency within our times, and the relationship of the idiom to contemporaneity.
Within this research, Peter examines passivity within both the act of producing and of viewing, considering whether this impulse is formed through a perpetual (contemporary) societal compulsion for mobility, or drive. The contemporary condition of viewing, looking on, consuming, enacting and partaking through inaction within capital-based societies encourages the 'citizen' to evoke the role of flâneur, peripatetic within a topography that is, in itself, marked by perpetual movement. Therefore, Peter's practice-led research considers if passivity is inherent to perpetual transition or 'passage' as a notable conscious, or unconscious activity of our times.
Recent awards and grants
- 2016 - 2016 Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (major prize award)
- 2014 - Artist residency: LIA - The Leipzig International Art Program, Germany
- 2012 - Project Grant, City of Melbourne
- 2010 - Artist residency: East China Normal University, Shanghai, PR China
- 2002 - Curatorial residency: Crossing: New Art from Australia, an exhibition of contemporary Australian art, ÄLTO, Helsinki Finland.
Peter's websites:
- PhD (in progress) (RMIT University)
- MA (Research) (Monash University)
- Cert. IV Edu. (RMIT University)
- Grad. Dip. Edu. (University of Melbourne)
- Grad. Dip. Fine Art (RMIT University)
- Dip. Fine Art (University of Ballarat)
Individual exhibitions (complete list)
- 2019 Susan Boutwell Gallery, Munich, Germany
- 2017 Afterall, NKN Gallery, Melbourne
- 2015 The Poor Hospital, NKN Gallery, Melbourne
- 2013 Drive, Blindside ARI, Melbourne
- 2013 Staring back at the world, Boutwell Draper Gallery, Sydney
- 2011 Look out, Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne
- 2010 Dieback, Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne
- 2009 48 Portraits, Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne
- 2006 Hard Times, The Doll’s House, Melbourne
- 2004 Similarities and differences, Crossley and Scott Gallery, Melbourne
- 2003 Shape, Crossley and Scott Gallery, Melbourne
- 1996 Things that have happened, Temple Studio, Melbourne
- 1995 Fruit of the forest, School of Art, Monash University, Melbourne
- 1992 Bandwagons, Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
- 1991 Untitled (Paintings), Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
- 1989 Assemblages, Reconnaissance Gallery, Melbourne
- 1988 Paintings, Reconnaissance Gallery, Melbourne
- 1986 Drawings, Reconnaissance Gallery, Melbourne
Selected recent group exhibitions
2018
Spring 1883, Blockprojects, Melbourne
Group show, Susan Boutwell Gallery, Munich, Germany
2017
B-Side, Blindside ARI, Melbourne
2016
Painting, More Painting, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
Calleen Art Award, Cowra Regional Art Gallery
Bayside Acquisitive Art Award, Bayside Arts and Cultural Centre, Melbourne2015
The Door in the Wall, Blindside ARI, Melbourne
2015
The Door in the Wall, Blindside ARI, Melbourne
2014
'Head: Incidents Above a Bar' (part 4), curated by Louise Paramour and Lisa Young, The Alderman, Melbourne;
'Asteroid, WinterSpinnerei 2014, Leipzig International Artist in Residence Program (LIA)', Spinnerei Arts Complex, Leipzig, Germany
2013
'Reading the Space': Contemporary Australian Drawing #3, New York Studio School, New York, USA
2012
'A place to eat from', Michael Jäger Collection, Atelier Dorrit Nebe, Cologne, Germany
'People … ahh People', Gallery Mesh, Seoul, South Korea; curator Mihwa Park
'The Rick Amor Drawing Prize', The Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat
'Contemporary Australian Drawing #2: drawing as notation, text and discovery', University of Arts London, UK
2011
'Crossing the Line: Drawing in the Middle East, intersections of understanding', Gallery Tashkeel & American University United Arab Emirates (UAE)
'Australian Art of the 1970’s', The Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat
2010
'2010: How can a Network…..?' The South Project, curator Zara Stanhope, West Wing (part of the program of West Space Gallery), Melbourne
1918 ArtSPACE, No. 20 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai, PR China
'Winter', Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne
'2010 Beleura National Works on Paper', (invitation) Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington
'Magnetic Islands', Project Space and Spare Room Gallery, RMIT University
'Distinction', 99 Creative Centre, Shanghai University Academy of Fine Arts, M50 Moganshan Lu Arts Complex; curator Song Kexi, writer/theorist Qui Min., Shanghai
2009–2010
'The Shilo Project', curator Dr Chris McAuliffe, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne; NETS touring exhibition: Mildura Arts Centre, SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney, Warrnambool Art Gallery, Wangaratta Exhibitions Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, Australia
'Imagine', The Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat
2008
'The Mars Project', Project Space and Spare Room Gallery, RMIT University, Melbourne
2007
'Eye to ‘I’ – the self in recent art', curator Geoff Wallis, The Art Gallery of Ballarat. NETS touring exhibition: Warrnambool Art Gallery, Hamilton Art Gallery, Australia
Representation in permanent public collections
Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat. Works included in the Painting Collection and the Prints and Drawing Collection
Art Bank, Sydney
Auckland Art Gallery / Toi O Tamaki, Auckland
Bayside Arts and Cultural Centre, Melbourne
Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong
National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne. Works included in the Painting Collection (Shell Collection and the Michelle Endowment Collection) and the Prints and Drawing Collection
RMIT University, Melbourne
Wollongong City Gallery, Wollongong
Victoria University, Melbourne
- Westwood, P. (2022). Caught by Surprise In: Caught by Surprise Braunschweig, Germany
- Westwood, P. (2021). Field of sorrow (Untethered) In: 2021 Geelong contemporary art prize Geelong, Australia
- Westwood, P. (2019). What is the Story for Tomorrow? In: What is the Story for Tomorrow? Munich, Germany
- Kibel, J.,Westwood, P. (2018). Wonderlust In: Wonderlust City of Yarra
- Westwood, P. (2016). Passivity; after 'an episode from a fight' In: 2016 Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (major prize award) Melbourne, Australia
- Westwood, P. (2016). The poor hospital In: Painting, More Painting Melbourne, Australia
- Westwood, P. (2016). Reliquaries In: Calleen Art Award Cowra, New South Wales, Australia
- Westwood, P. (2016). Bus stop In: Michael Wegerer: Bouncing Borders: Data, Sculpture and Graphic, De Gruyter, Vienna, Austria
- Westwood, P. (2016). Our Ideal World In: Free and Foreign Subjectivity Townsville, Queensland
- Westwood, P. (2014). Looking at looking, The poor hospital, up then down, out there, not working In: Asteroid, Winter Spinnerei 2014 Leipzig, Germany
1 PhD Current Supervisions and 1 Masters by Research Current Supervisions2 Masters by Research Completions
- Tailing. Funded by: City of Melbourne Arts Grant from (2013 to 2013)