Art Forum: Wendy Sharpe

2018 Fellow of the National Art School Wendy Sharpe will speak to her long and distinguished career in the visual arts. A winner of the Archibald Prize (1996), the Sulman Prize(1986), the Portia Geach Memorial Award twice over (1995, 2003) and the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing (2014), Wendy was also the first woman artist since WWII to travel as an Official Artist to the Australian Army History Unit (in East Timor, 1999).

Wendy’s involvement with the National Art School began in 1986 when  she undertook a short course in Etching. In 1990, she began teaching as  a sessional lecturer in both the Painting and Drawing departments, and took up a permanent part-time position in the Painting department from 1995–2005. She has been one of the school’s most outspoken supporters, famously giving a speech outside the 2016 rally at Parliament House.

She says, ‘NAS has always been a place for artists – enthusiastic, creative and exciting – where making art is the most important thing.  This is only art school I would study in myself if I was starting out now.’

Sharpe is currently artist in residence at the State Library of New South Wales, and her work can be seen in the current Sulman Prize exhibition at AGNSW, the Salon des Refusés at S.H. Ervin Gallery, the travelling exhibition Salient: Contemporary Artists at the Western Front and the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, opening Friday. Wendy has an upcoming exhibition with King Street Gallery on William in August. You can find out more at www.wendysharpe.com or Instagram @wendysharpeart

Image: Wendy Sharpe in her studio. Image courtesy the artist