Andrew SIBLEY
Born in England 1933, Died Melbourne 2015
Andrew Sibley is a renowned Australian artist whose career has spanned over five decades. From his early success in the 1960’s, Sibley has consistently exhibited around Australia and overseas. Throughout his career, Sibley has had a strong critical and commercial success, as well as having won and been a finalist in numerous major art prizes.
Andrew Sibley is represented in all Australian national and state galleries, leading municipal, university and regional galleries, and private collections in Australia and abroad.
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Notable in the Archibald Prize, Sibley has won many Art Awards including the 1962 Transfield prize, 1965 Winemakers prize, 1967 Bathurst Award, 1968 Georges Invitation, Melbourne, 1969 Launceston (QVMAG purchase), 1969 Shepparton Art Award, 1970 Gold Coast City (purchase), 1972 Townsville (purchase), also, 1961 and 2004 awarded numerous art prizes including Toowoomba Chronicle Art Prize Sydney and The Winemakers’ Prize (shared), Melbourne, Caltex-Warana Prize and many more.
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Andrew Sibley is a charming, gentle man -- but his savagely beautiful art pulls no punches, as he admits.
Mostly, Sibley paints universal human situations -- people in love, people being selfish, dancing, fighting and dying -- but every now and then, he feels compelled to deliver a knock-out blow to our current politicians.
While the political scene gives Sibley plenty of food for thought, he continues to find inspiration in the human condition and the ways in which we interact and relate. As Sibley says: "I like to feel my works have that necessary aesthetic ingredient, that they can be enjoyed in terms of colour, the patterning -- I'd like people to enjoy them -- but just with a quite shudder now and again!“
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He died in Melbourne on 3 September 2015.
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Sibley’s work is represented in all the major institutional collections in Australia including National Galleries of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of NSW, Queensland Art Gallery, Art Gallery of SA, Parliament House Canberra, National Portrait Gallery (Australia), Tarrawarra Museum of Art, and regional galleries throughout Australia. His work is also held in significant private collections in Asia, Europe and the United States including the Australian Embassy Collection Washington USA.
