# Alan Constable

Alan Constable (born 1956) is an Australian artist well known for his ceramic sculptural depictions of photographic cameras. Constable has worked principally from his Northcote-based studio at Arts Project Australia since 1991, gaining critical success as a multi-disciplinary artist proficient in a wide diversity of media including pastel, gouache, paint and ceramics. He has been working on his series of ceramic cameras since 2007 and works from this series were represented at the 2009 Australian Ceramic Triennale in Sydney and featured in a solo exhibition of his work, Clay Cameras, at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne. Thirteen works from this series were acquired for the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014, and appeared in their blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art, Melbourne Now, in the same year.

## Early life and education

Constable was born in Melbourne. His "fascination with light and love of cameras" began at the age of eight, when he would construct intricate replicas of cameras, made from cereal cartons and glue. As artist Peter Atkins states, this early "interest in cameras – objects that are totally reliant on vision to find, frame and capture an image – is not without irony," due to the fact that Constable is both legally blind and deaf. He participated in his first group exhibition in 1987 at St Martin's Theatre Gallery in South Yarra, Melbourne and shortly thereafter he began regularly working at Arts Project Australia (APA), an organisation devoted to supporting and promoting artists with an intellectual disability. Although Constable received no formal training, his participation in the studio program at APA gave him access to fine art materials and the informal tuition provided by the practicing artists employed by the organisation. Following the commencement of his work at APA he began exhibiting regularly in Australia and participated in his first international group exhibitions in 1995, in the US and Belgium.

## Career, themes and style

Both Constable's lack of formal training and disability has identified him as one of the key figures within the Outsider Art category in Australia. This categorisation is confirmed by his repeated inclusion in Outsider Art exhibitions and fairs, both in Australia and in the USA [see Exhibitions]. However, in recent years his work has also achieved critical success in the wider sphere of the Australian contemporary art institution and his first solo exhibition occurred at Helen Gory Galerie, a commercial art gallery located in Melbourne, in 2009. This exhibition was quickly followed by his inclusion in the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014, a solo exhibition in Los Angeles curated by the artist Ricky Swallow in 2013 and his inclusion an exhibition curated by the Museum of Everything at the Kunsthal, Rotterdam, in 2016.
A multi-disciplinary artist, Constable's drawings and paintings are typically depictions of landscapes, solitary figures and animals, which are sourced from expired books and magazines, such as National Geographic. His style for both his two dimensional and ceramic works has been attributed to the way in which he utilises his extremely limited sight to focus on a singular aspect of a scene or subject. This stylistic focus, the selection of his subject matter and the tactile nature of his works (which often feature the imprint of the artist's fingers on the clay surface) imply a close personal relationship between the artist and the works; as David Hurlston, Curator of Australian Art at the NGV, notes, the ceramic cameras "become a very personal and touching tribute. [They] contain traces of humanity." His work has been compared that of Claes Oldenburg, in that both artists transform utilitarian objects by "altering scale and exploiting differences in materials" and former NGV curator Alex Baker has compared his work to that of Philip Guston, stating that "if Philip Guston was a ceramicist, these are the kind of objects he would make."

## Solo exhibitions

Alan Constable: Close –Up, Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane, 2015
Alan Constable, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, 2015
Alan Constable/Ten Cameras, Curated by Ricky Swallow, South Willard, Los Angeles, 2013
Viewfinder: Alan Constable Survey, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2011
Constable, Stills Gallery, Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales, 2011
Alan Constable Clay Cameras, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne, 2009

## Selected group exhibitions

Gold Coast International Ceramic Art Award, Gold Coast City Gallery, Gold Coast, 2016
Clay: it's a matter of substance, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2016
Museum of Everything, Kunsthal Rotterdam, 2016
Tell 'em I'm dead, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2016
It takes more than 140 characters to write a novel, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2015
Victorian Craft Award, Craft, Melbourne, 2015
Polaroid Project, Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Horsham, 2014
Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, 2014
Melbourne Art Fair 2014, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne (1994 – 2014)
Renegades: Outsider Art, Moree Plains Gallery, NSW, 2014
Into the Vault and Out of the Box, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2014
Renegades: Outsider Art, The Arts Centre Gold Coast, Queensland, 2014
Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, 2014
Chicago Expo: Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Chicago, USA, 2013
Nocturne, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2013
Manningham Victorian Ceramic Art Award, Manningham Art Gallery, 2013
Outsiderism, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, 2013
Error and Judgement, Arts Project Australia Gallery Melbourne, 2012
Exhibition #4, Museum of Everything, London, 2011
The Shilo Project, national exhibition, 2009 - 2011
This Sensual World, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2011
National Gallery of Victoria 150th event, Melbourne, 2011
Human Nature, Alan Lane Community Gallery: Warrnambool Art Gallery, 2011
Hobart Art Prize, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 2010
Pacifica, Gallery Impaire, Paris, France, 2010
Snapshot, ACGA Gallery, Federation Square, Melbourne, 2009
Off the Edge: Ceramics Triennale, Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Sydney, 2009
BloodLines: Art and the Horse, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane, 2009
Alan Constable & Julian Martin, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 2009
Clay Cameras, Centre for Contemporary Photography, (CCP) Melbourne, 2009
17th Annual Outsider Art Fair, The Mart, New York, 2009
Short Stories, Tall Tales and the Way They Wore Them, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2008
Pearls of Arts Project Australia: The Stuart Purves Collection, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, College of Fine Arts, UNSW Sydney, 2008
The Dinner Party, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2007
Private and Confidential, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2007
Double Take, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2005
A Sense of Place, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2003
Face Up, Idiom Studio, New Zealand, 2002
Arterial - artists from Arts Project Australia, Paralympic Arts Festival, Sydney Opera House, 2000
2000 National Works on Paper, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, 2000
Works on Paper, Australian Galleries, Sydney, 1999
Connexions Particulières, MADMusée and Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Liège, Belgium, 1999
Nine Artists from Arts Project Australia, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 1999
The Inner View, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 1999
Prints & Artists' Books, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne, 1997
Border Crossing, McClelland Regional Gallery, Langwarrin, 1996
Wild Things, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne, 1996
Reversed Image, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 1995
MADMusée, Liège, Belgium, 1995
Vita Gallery, Portland, Oregon, USA, 1995
Beyond Words, National Gallery of Victoria, 1994
International Works on Paper Fair, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 1993
Gone to PAC, National Gallery of Victoria, 1993
Inside Out/Outside In, National Gallery of Victoria, 1992
Arts Project, 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne, 1991

## Publications

Alan Constable: Viewfinder, exhibition catalogue, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne, 2015. ISBN 9780958665964

## Collections

Gold Coast City Gallery, AUS
City of Melbourne, AUS
Deakin University, AUS
National Gallery of Victoria, AUS
The Museum of Everything, UK
Broken Hill Regional Gallery Collection, AUS
Orange Regional Gallery, AUS
Manningham Art Gallery, AUS