Tasmanian artist Josh Foley, born in Launceston, holds a Bachelor of Contemporary Art (Hons) from the University of Tasmania. He has exhibited throughout Australia including 20 solo shows and has received a number of prestigious awards, grants, commissions and residencies. His work is held in many public and private collections throughout Australia, including the collection of the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery.
In 2011 Foley won The John Glover Prize, which is the richest landscape prize in Australia. Anthony Bond OAM, speaking in 2011, then Curator of International Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and head judge of the Glover prize 2011, said of Josh’s work; “…it’s talking about the whole history of the conventions of western painting.”
Solo exhibitions include Blue Lines at MOP Projects: Hosted by Galerie pompom, Sydney (2015); Parametric Painting Institute at Gallerysmith Project Space, North Melbourne (2015); Transference at Devonport Regional Gallery, Devonport (2014); Caffeine as part of PAINTFACE Curated by Polly Dance at Constance ARI, Hobart (2014); The Parataxic Sublime at Kings ARI, Melbourne (2013); The Uncarved Block, at Outward Project, Launceston (2013).
“Predominately the texture represented in my images is an illusion and the paintings surfaces are actually flat. This is not evident if the viewer cannot observe them in the space that they hang. This trompe l’oeil (trick of the eye) that I work with is not to deceive but to confuse the haptic expectations and bodily position of the audience. I want to disrupt the usual relationships that someone viewing a painting has to create a schism within their mind and in turn the corporeal reality they are situated in.” Josh Foley, Launceston, 2016.
Exhibitions
