John Nixon

John Nixon (b. Sydney, Australia) is one of the leading figures in Australasian abstraction. Since graduating from the National Gallery School, Melbourne in 1970 his work has been dedicated to on-going experimentation in the idioms of radical modernism, minimalism, the monochrome, collage, constructivism, non-objective art and the readymade, which remain key reference points in his work. Nixon has exhibited extensively during his distinguished career in solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, the United States and Australasia and in 1982 was included in the major exhibition Documenta 7, in Kassel, Germany. Since 1984 he has been exhibiting regularly in New Zealand, developing a productive artistic dialogue with other New Zealand artists, in particular, Julian Dashper, Stephen Bambury, Milan Mrkusich and Gordon Walters and resulting in an extensive holding of his work in major New Zealand public art collections. In 2017 Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki staged the exhibition John Nixon Abstraction/ Colour is an Abstraction, based on the work held in their collection that was acquired over a 30 year period. Selected international collections include: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York;  Museum Sztuki, Lodz; Foire National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; Stiftung fur Konkrete Kunst, Reutlingen; National Gallery of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea; The Artists Museum, Lodz; Herning Kunstmuseumm, Denmark; DaimlerChrysler Collection, Berlin; Kunstmuseum Esberg, Denmark, Espace d’Art Contemporain, Demigny and Australian National Gallery, Canberra.

Link to the Colour Music performance video from The Score exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne.