Julie Fragar

Julie Fragar

Julie Fragar (b. 1977) makes paintings about the stories we tell. Intensely biographical, her work toes the line between fiction and fact creating vast, vivid imagery that is the stuff of myth-making. Text paintings with pithy and often plaintiff declamations function in tandem with dramatic images, prompting tangential readings and critical speculation. Disparate imagery is often superimposed in complex, multi-layered compositions. In her intense studies of ostensible realities, Fragar alludes to the fallibility of facts and the cryptic potential of subject matter.

Fragar has exhibited nationally and internationally in major institutions. 2023 has seen the first career survey of her work titled, Biograph. Mapping more than twenty years of practice, the current touring exhibition assembles key works made between 1998 and 2021. Her 2018 solo exhibition at Sarah Cottier Gallery, Next Witness, toured to the Supreme Court Library in 2019. Other notable exhibitions include The National: New Australian Art, Carriageworks, Sydney (2019); Ramsay Art Prize, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2017); and QGOMA: Contemporary Queensland Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2015). Her work is held in major public collections nationally including the Art Gallery of NSW; Art Gallery of South Australia; and the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane to name a few.

Selected works

Exhibitions