Geoffrey Odgers
My studio and creative practice has and remains private, solitary and personal. I need time alone to ingest the essence of my chosen themes and to spend the time necessary to do preliminary works before embarking on a new series.
My influences as a late teen were the Surrealists and Constructivists, especially the assemblages of Schwitters and Tatlin, and the frottage of Ernst. The seminal exhibition Two Decades of American Painting at the National Gallery of Victoria in the late '60s completed my foundation in the principles and aesthetics of modern art practices.
A large portion of my work is made from found images and marks/textures, shadows, the ubiquitous corrugated cardboard and bubblewrap as textures and printing marks. I often make my own paper to allow me the maximum range of possibilities to create work, search for new adjectives and push myself past my own aesthetic.
Recently, I have devoted considerable time to sketching and making formal drawings as another avenue to make my ideological and creative beliefs come alive.
Odgers exhibited extensively throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Solo exhibitions at the prestigious Pinacotheca Gallery in Melbourne and Painters Gallery, Sydney as well as the National Art School in Papua New Guinea. He was a finalist on a number of occasions in the Faber Castell Drawing Prize, Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney; Wollongong Prize and the Perth International Prize for Drawing at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. But he decided in 2002 to take a hiatus from exhibiting for a variety of reasons before returning in 2019.
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Exhibitions
solo
2024 My and Don Quixote's Enigmatic Journey - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Stoic Permanence/Spiritual Joy - BAS Exhibition Centre, Moruya Regional Gallery, NSW
2023 Stoic Permanence/Spiritual Joy - Red Gallery, Melbourne
2002 Texture and Line - Cutcliffe Gallery, Sydney
group
2024 Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize - Sydney
2023 Bermingham Watercolour Prize - Griffith University, Brisbane
60 x 60 - Red Gallery, Melbourne
Buy or Cry - SOL Gallery, Melbourne
Small Works - East Gippsland Gallery, Bairnsdale
River of Art Prize - Batemans Bay, NSW
Homage to Home & Place - BAS Regional Gallery, Moruya, NSW
Group - Straithnairn Woolshed Gallery, Canberra
SUBSTRATE 23 - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Bound Pigment - Tacit Art, Melbourne
Unearthed - Belconnen Gallery, Canberra
Small Works Prize - Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne
2022 Fragmentation MAANZ - No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne
Small Works - East Gippsland Gallery, Bairnsdale
Ginenderry Drawing Prize - Straithnarn
REDtrospective - Red Gallery, Melbourne
Group - Straithnairn Woolshed Gallery, Canberra
Material Musings MAANZ - Gallery 107, Sydney
River of Art - Narooma Oyster Festival, NSW
Firestorm - BAS Exhibition Centre, Moruya Regional Gallery, NSW
Small Works Prize - Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne
2021 Flow On - Wollongong City Gallery
Small Works - East Gippsland Gallery, Bairnsdale
River of Art Prize - NSW [Winner]
New Leaves New Lives - Ulladulla Civic Centre, NSW
2020 Pandemic My Deepest Experience - Mosaico En Uruguay
2019 Revive - BAS Regional Gallery, Moruya, NSW
MAANZ National Exhibition - Octagon Gallery, Bungendore, NSW [Winner]