John Nixon

John Nixon

John Nixon (born Sydney1949, died Melbourne 2020) is internationally recognised as a seminal figure in Australian art. For over 50 years, Nixon produced and exhibited abstract and conceptual works that extended the possibilities of radical modernism. Through constant experimentation with formalist tactics, Nixon sought to redefine the possibilities and interpretations of the monochrome, construction painting, readymade, and non-objective abstraction, and as a result, contemporised the ideologies of modernist predecessors who influenced his work. Most significant to Nixon’s perturbation was his vernacularisation of modernist tropes. His practice was one of pragmatism and economy. Nixon preferred cheap, readily available materials over fine art materials, and produced paintings quickly, in a single coat, most often with enamel on found or discarded offcuts of canvas, wood, hessian, cardboard, and even other paintings. The first of Nixon’s iconic ‘block paintings’ were produced in 1968 using canvas remnants from the much larger paintings of his studio peers.

In 1990, Nixon conceived the Experimental Painting Workshop (EPW) as a conceptual vehicle for his highly productive, exploratory painting practice. The term EPW is applicable to most of Nixon’s activity since the late seventies. In 1999 Nixon was awarded the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, and in 2001/2 was the recipient of the Australia Council Fellowship award. As well as annual exhibitions in both Sydney and Melbourne, Nixon had an extremely active schedule of solo shows in commercial galleries and museums internationally (Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, UK & the USA). His work is held in numerous significant public and private collections internationally, including the prestigious Daimler Chrysler Collection in Berlin, and in 1982 was selected by curator Germano Celant to represent Australia at Documenta 7, Kassel.

Selected works

Exhibitions