GRAHAM KUO
Born in China in 1948, Kuo arrived in Australia in 1963 and studied at the National Art School, graduating in 1972. He was a lecturer in Painting and Printmaking at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced education from 1976 – 81, City Art Institute 1982 – 89 and the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales 1990 – 99 and a senior Lecturer at College of Fine Arts 2000 – 04. He has travelled widely throughout the USA, Europe and Asia.
His artistic inheritance is embedded in abstraction but influenced by his cultural heritage and the influences of Chinese calligraphy and philosophy. Kuo’s work has long been described by critics and arts writers as being located at an intersection of Western art traditions and methods with Eastern philosophies and sensibilities, reflecting his preoccupation with effecting an aesthetic reconciliation between the Western abstract sensibility and a uniquely Chinese form of calligraphic mark-making, through a visual language of gestural, lyrical abstraction.
The artist’s canvasses are awash with brilliant colour and articulated by sinuous gestural marks and this new body of work overflows once again with pure movement, beauty and sheer elegance. These pictures have a stillness and contemplativeness at their core which serve to heighten the bursts of colour and gesture contained therein. Kuo stands at the forefront of abstract expressionism in Australia.
Kuo is represented in Sydney by SPOT81, BMG Fine Art in Adelaide, Gaffer Studios in Hong Kong and Galerie White8 in Austria, he has had more than 40 solo exhibitions in Australia and internationally and his work is held in all major public collections throughout Australia including: the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Western Australia and regional galleries including Maitland Regional Art Gallery, the New England Regional Art Museum and Lake Macquarie Regional gallery as well as international collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Caledonia National Gallery.