MAREE AZZOPARDI

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Maree Azzopardi was born in 1966. A practicing artist since 1994, Azzopardi has held over 30 solo exhibitions throughout Australia, Italy, Malta and Sweden. Her work has been featured in important group exhibitions alongside renowned figureheads Marina Abramovic, Cindy Sherman and Annie Leibovitz, and she is represented in many international art collections including in Dubai, New York and London. In 1996, she joined prestigious Rome gallery Il Ponte Contemporanea and appeared on the front cover of American ARTnews in 1998. Since the mid-90s, Azzopardi and her frequent collaborator the Rome-based curator and critic Jonathan Turner have worked together on more than two dozen international art projects.  

Azzopardi's art works show a maturity and confidence in working on paper, utilising both traditional and non-traditional materials. Majoring in drawing from Sydney’s UNSW School of Art and Design (formally COFA) there is an appreciation that can be clearly witnessed as the artist handles large concertina books of SAR mulberry paper adorned with lashes of ink, charcoal, gold leaf and paint. Works on paper are treated with charcoal scavenged from local beaches post flood and from fire ravaged landscapes -  crushed, then mopped to apply marks to paper laid onto the floor. Found objects and animal remains become treated almost in ritual performance with gold leaf, paint and charcoal and become absorbed into the canvas.

The result of her studio practice are art works intricate with mark making and highly embellished with gold thread, gold leaf, echoing richly ornamented spaces usually reserved for holy practices. In these spaces, Azzopardi inspects representations of the divine in the face of a changing world and an ever changing landscape.