Geoff Todd

Geoff Todd (born 1950 in Chelsea, Victoria) is an Australian artist and social commentator and has a contemporary figurative style in drawing, painting and sculpture. Geoff Todd works between studios in Winnellie, NT, and Ararat, Victoria.
Early life and education
Geoff Todd grew up on a small dairy farm in Gippsland, Victoria.
Geoff Todd worked as an art teacher in several Victorian State Technical schools during the 1970s and 1980s. While teaching at Monterey Secondary College in 1980, he took a half-year residency at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne before heading to Maningrida in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia in 1984, where he served as a craft adviser. Following his departure from Maningrida in 1987, Todd worked as an Art Lecturer at Batchelor Institute in Rum Jungle, Northern Territory, before becoming a part-time Sculpture Lecturer at Charles Darwin University, also in the Northern Territory.
Exhibitions
Todd began his career as an artist in the mid-1970s. He gained recognition for his "Book Sculptures," which were first exhibited at Powell Street Gallery in Melbourne in 1978 and later showcased in Australia and the UK. In 1984, he presented an exhibition of "Dictionary Paintings" at Christine Abraham's Gallery, incorporating silk screen, etching, wood block prints, and collage to reproduce well-known magazines, children's storybooks, and an illustrated dictionary.
Throughout his career, Todd has executed public commissions, including the facades of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory and the Northern Territory Parliament House in 1994. His artistic contributions have extended to Indonesia, where his work is held in various museums' permanent collections in different cities. Some of his pieces have been acquired by the Northern Territory Museums and Art Galleries' permanent collection.
In 1999, Todd held an exhibition at Benteng Vredeberg (The Dutch Fort) in Yogyakarta, Java, which was inaugurated by Prince Prabukusomo, the younger brother of the current Sultan Hamengkubuwono X of Yogyakarta. This exhibition garnered positive responses, establishing Todd as a respected artist both in Indonesia and Australia."
His figurative work reveals intimate, personal and sometimes erotic connections with his subjects, while pursuing broader themes.
"In a career spanning over forty years Geoff Todd's practice has consistently expressed his commitment to social justice and activism, while also reflecting his responses to wider political issues ranging from the so-called 'Bali Nine' arrests in 2005, to September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Figurative art led Todd to translate three-dimensional form into two-dimensional drawing and painting. About his portrait of Judas Iscariot, the American author Susan Gubar writes "Todd's image emphasizes guilt, remorse, a conviction about one's own worthlessness. Less a demon, more a monk or mendicant, a hopeless Judas atoning in desolate silence clarifies how it feels to be John's son of perdition, an anathema." in 2017, The Darwin gallery, Framed, featured Todd's work for their closing exhibition after thirty years . The solo show along with the book, "Reflections" revealed thirty years of the artist's work and his thought processes.
In 2019, he was recognized as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Australia Day Honours for his "significant service to the visual arts as an artist and sculptor."
Other work
Book design & illustration
Barnaby, Jane, Mountain Cattlemen, Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1982. [designer]
Barnett, Gillian, The Inside Hedge Story, Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1981. [illustrator]
Dowling, Carolyn & McCracken, Noelle, The Book of Melbourne, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1983,
[designer & illustrator] p. 9-10, 14-19, 28-32, 69
Epstein, June, When Tracey Came For Christmas, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982. [illustrator]
McCracken, Noelle & Taylor, Brent, The Truck Driver, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1983. [designer]
What Rubbish!, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982, [designer]
Zable, Arnold, Clown Boy, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982. [designer]
The River Man, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982. [designer]
Lindsey, Tim & Pausacker, Helen (Eds) Religion, Law and Intolerance in Indonesia, Routledge, Oxford, 2016
Lindsey Tim & Nicholson, Penelope, Drugs Law and Legal Practice in South East Asia: Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam, Hart Publishing, Oxford 2015
Murphy, Brian, Gangelhoff, Puffin Books, Ringwood, 1986. [Illustrator]
Publications & catalogues
Carmon, Odelia & Todd, Geoff D, I Came Down To Earth, Saray Publishing, Sydney, 2001
Città di Firenze, Biennale Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea, Settima Edizione 2009,p. 578-579 florence biennale past editions
Christies, Australian, International & Contemporary Paintings, Christies Australia, South Yarra, 2005, p. 172
Germaine, Max, Artists and Galleries of Australia, Third Edition (Revised and enlarged), Craftsman House, Roseville, (1984) 1990, Vol. 2, p. 677 -78.
Gubar, Susan, Juda: A Biography, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 2009, p. 252, 254-55.
Healy, Jacqueline, " Geoff Todd: War Heroes, Portraits of Victoria Cross Winners & A Protest in Blood", Bundoora Homestead Gallery, Bundoora, 2001
Levitt, Stewart A, & Todd, Geoff D, (with Carmon, Odelia & Overby II, Rodney) Psalms For The Secular: A Collaboration Between Stewart Levitt and Geoff Todd,
Saray Publishing, Sydney, 2005,
Lindsey, Tim & Hines, Toby (Eds) Looking North- The Art of Geoff Todd: Outsider, Maverick, Humanist, Zebu Press, Hawthorn East, 2005
Lucas, Janette (Ed) Geoff Todd: Beautiful Beasts, Sprout Creative, Darwin 2016
McCulloch, Alan (Ed.) "MPAC 10th Anniversary Exhibition"' Mornington Peninsula Arts Centre Mornington, Victoria, 1979, p. 10. http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/32484891?selectedversion=NBD41760748
McCulloch, Alan, (w/McCulloch, Susan) The Encyclopaedia of Australian Art, (Revised & Updated), Allen & Urwin, (1968) 1994, p. 702 https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/visual-arts/Encyclopedia-of-Australian-Art-Alan-Sue-McCulloch-9781863733151
McCulloch, Alan, McCulloch, Susan & McCulloch Childs, Emily (Eds) The New McCulloch's Encyclopaedia of Australian Art, Australian Art Editions/The Miegunyah Press, Fourth Edition, (1968) 2006, p,957 http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/9035129
McCullough, Thomas G (Ed.) The First Australian Sculpture Triennial, La Trobe University/ Danforth Press, Melbourne, 1981, p. 164 & 272 http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21213706?selectedversion=NBD2595661
Mendham, Dawn about/Territory_picture_show_30_September_26_November "Territory Picture Show", Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, (MAGNT), Fannie Bay, Northern Territory, 1995. [unpaginated]
Mendham, Dawn & West, Margie, Contemporary Territory, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, 1994, p. 52-55. Contemporary Territory (MAGNT) 1994
Murray, Daena, The Sound Of The Sky, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory/Charles Darwin University Press, 2006, p. 135-36, 145,150 "The Sound Of The Sky: The Northern Territory in Australian Art", Museum & Art Gallery The Sound Of The Sky (MAGNT)/Charles Darwin University Press 2006
Office of the Administrator Northern Territory, 1999, Northern Territory Chronicle 1974-1998,
Perkins, Hetty (Ed.) Crossing Country- The Alchemy of Western Arnhem Land, Art Gallery of New South Wales Publications, Sydney, 2004, p. 179. Crossing Country- The Alchemy of Western Arnhem Land, 2004
Todd, Geoff, 3. / Geoff Todd, Zebu Press, 2006 http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/30338806
Todd, Geoff, Artful Drawing from the Nude, OTH Gallery Publication, 2009
Todd, Geoff, Reflections, Published by Sprout Creative, 2017
Television
Rebgetz, Louisa, "Territory Artist's Playful Exhibition", ABC, "7:30 Report", Darwin,15 June 2012 [5.19 duration]
References
20th-century Australian painters
Artists from Melbourne
1950 births
Living people
Members of the Order of Australia
People from Chelsea, Victoria
Monash University alumni
La Trobe University alumni
21st-century Australian painters
University of Melbourne alumni