Statement / Bio
2017 RU Alum Andrew Nicholls is an Australian/British artist, writer, and curator whose practice engages with the sentimental, camp, and other historically-marginalized aesthetics, and traces the historical recurrence of particular aesthetic motifs. He is especially concerned with periods of cultural transition during which Western civilization’s stoic aspirations were undone by base desires, fears or compulsions, and with 18th century Britain’s fascination with, and paranoia of, other cultures and ‘othered’ identities. This photographic work “Elemental Play” is a portrait of model George Dellinger and yoga instructor Jared McCann. Shot on the roof deck of Dellinger’s Brooklyn apartment (2 blocks away from RU’s headquarters in Carrol Gardens), the work is a tribute to the highly-mannered aesthetics of Jared French, an iconic gay artist from New York whose work Nicholls fell in love with during his first trip to New York during the summer of 2017.
Nicholls has exhibited across Australia, Southeast Asia, and Europe, In 2019 he had a solo show at the Art Gallery of Western Australia Perth, He has been the recipient of two Creative Development Fellowships from the Western Australian Government, and undertaken commissions for several organizations in Australia and the United States, most recently a $250,000 ceiling mural for the City of Perth Library, and a major drawing commission for the Artbank collection. While primarily drawing-based, his practice also incorporates ceramics, photography, installation, performance, and filmmaking. In 2015 he was allowed exclusive access to photograph Donatello’s David, by the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, as part of a body of work investigating aesthetic legacies of the Grand Tour, currently in production via a Fellowship from the Western Australian Government.
Artist website: http://www.andrewnicholls.com.au