MIRANDA SKOCZEK
BIOGRAPHY & CV
Miranda Skoczek’s art gestures towards utopia. Her paintings, which draw freely from across the globe’s visual languages, allow the viewer to witness the birth of new meanings and relationships, and imagine how the fantastical spaces that materialize out of the artist’s musings and experimentations with imagery might be inhabited.
Using a methodology that samples and remixes iconographies from across histories and cultures, Skoczek creates a symbolic palimpsest that collapses any sense of distance between east and west, past and present, abstraction and representation, and demonstrates that, in the end, all forms of representation differ from each other only by degree.
Here seemingly disparate imagery, taken from embroidery patterns, traditional folk art imagery, Chinese and Japanese woodblock prints, Mughal miniatures and Islamic architectural motifs, coalesce on the picture plane and celebrate our human penchant for decoration and embellishment. Such work, which speaks of the way in which spiritual sanctuaries can be created, and of how human actualization may be achieved for all, proposes an ideal location for a common ground.
Education
2002-2004
Bachelor of Fine Arts - Painting, Victorian College of the Arts
2000-2001
Diploma of Visual Art - Painting, Victoria University of Technology
1995-1997
Diploma of Applied Arts & Graphic Design, Canberra Institute of Technology
Solo Exhibitions
2009
Patterns of Knowledge, Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane
Rhythm & Memory, Gilligan Grant Gallery, Melbourne
2008
The Beautiful and the Good, Gilligan Grant Gallery, Melbourne
2005
Recent Paintings, Alafia, Melbourne
2004
Seeking, Seeing, Finding’ Intrude Gallery, Melbourne
2001
Visual Eclectica, Gallery 11, Melbourne
Group Exhibitions
2009
Recent Works, Harrison Galleries, Sydney
Smoking Guns, the Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong
2008
Christmas Show, Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane
New Artists, Gilligan Grant Gallery, Melbourne
2007
Troop, Gilligan Grant Gallery, Melbourne
2006
Salt Contemporary Art, Queenscliff, Victoria
2005
The Chandelier Show Ladner & Fell Gallery, Melbourne
2004
Graduation Show, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne
2003
The Wall, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne
2002
Proud, Victorian College of the Arts , Melbourne
2002
Postcard Show, Linden Gallery, Melbourne
2001
VUT Graduate Show, Span Gallery, Melbourne
2001
Senini Prize Exhibition, McLelland Gallery, Victoria
Prizes
Victorian College of the Arts, Painting Prize, Graduate Show
Reviews
2009
Editor's Choice, Patricia Anderson, Australian Art Review, issue 20
Art Events, Vogue Living, May/June 09
Art Watch, review by Deputy Editor Lisa Thomas, Home Beautiful
Domain Arts by Kerri O'Brien, The Age Newspaper
2008
Around the Galleries, review by Megan Backhouse, The Age Newspaper
Artist Profiles by Janice McCulloch, Art Almanac, May edition
2007
Inside Out, by Jason Grant
2008
Art Almanac profile Janice McCulloch
2008
The Age, Domain by Kerrie O’Brien
2008
The Age, Sightlines by Frances Johnston
Publications
2008
4cats Art Education, Studio Arts Preparation by Philip Grant and Therese Grant