TONY CURRAN
I came to art studying psychology and kept finding myself drawing psychological phenomena rather than writing my lab reports. After going on a trip to Europe I saw how exciting drawing and painting was and enrolled in Art School as soon as I could.
At COFA there was a lecturer who taught me to cherish all the things I was doing wrong in drawing, and then I realised there's infinite terrain to explore as an artist.
Art is what keeps the world magical for me.My wife and I honeymooned in New York. I got to choose the galleries and Sonya got to choose the restaurants. One time when I roaming galleries alone, was at Greene Naftalie in Chelsea and saw Harun Farocki's 'Parallel I-V' for the first time. I was so knocked around by it - its humour, coupled with sublimity that I wasn't paying attention and got pick-pocketed. It was worth it.
Sawtooth welcomed me shortly after moving to Tassie. Zara, Lauren and the Board (which I serve on) have been unbelievably welcoming and supportive.
I love seeing how Sawtooth engages with the local Art School at UTAS, and the opportunities it provides new generations of artists. It has a strong set of values which it holds itself to, and I think that's why it's lasted so long.
Support the arts, because the arts support you!
Biography
Tony Curran (b.1984) is a visual artist. His paintings, drawings and digital media aim at the desire to be free in a cybernetically constrained age. His work combines painterly approaches and web 2.0 aesthetics through GUI (Graphical-User-Interface) abstraction. The digital wiggle is an enduring motif in Curran’s work and pivots around mobile devices as a pressure point of visual culture. His attention to colour, combined with the digital ‘wiggle’ provides an improvisational foil for systems-based, process-oriented art making.
Tony graduated with a PhD in Fine Art in 2015 and has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. His works are included in the collections of Artbank, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, Charles Sturt University and the Australian National University Art Collection. He has been shortlisted in national awards, including the Archibald Prize (2015), Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2014), and the Swan Hill Print and Drawing Award (2017).
Tony is a Lecturer in Fine Art in the School of Creative Arts and Media at the University of Tasmania, Inveresk.
@tonygcurran