Ker­rie Poliness

Born Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia 1962

Lives and works in Melbourne

Ker­rie Poli­ness is a Mel­bourne-based artist whose sys­tem­at­ic, col­lab­o­ra­tive, and often open-end­ed process pro­duces paint­ings, draw­ings, sculp­tures and films inflect­ed with his­to­ries of con­cep­tu­al and abstract art. Her large-scale wall-draw­ings and pub­lic art­works rely on the agency of the artwork’s par­tic­i­pants – each individual’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the artist’s instruc­tions – cou­pled with the phys­i­cal con­di­tions of a site, and chal­lenge the fixed para­me­ters of the work by ren­der­ing the out­come unpre­dictable. Poli­ness is asso­ci­at­ed with an influ­en­tial group of artists who reit­er­at­ed the rel­e­vance of geo­met­ric abstrac­tion in Mel­bourne in the late 1980s and 90s, through the inno­v­a­tive artist-run space Store 5 which she co-founded. 

Poliness’s sig­nif­i­cant exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry includes Field Draw­ing #1, HOTA, Gold Coast (2018); Every Bril­liant Eye: Aus­tralian Art of the 1990s, Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, Mel­bourne (2017); Land­scape Paint­ings (Lake Bolac and Zagreb) and Wave Draw­ings (orange and green), G‑MK, Zagreb (2014); Trace: Per­for­mance and its Doc­u­ments, Queens­land Art Gallery & Gallery of Mod­ern Art, Bris­bane (2014); Wall works, Arts Lifts, Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia, Can­ber­ra (2014); and Mel­bourne Now, Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, Mel­bourne, 2013. Poli­ness has devel­oped a num­ber of site-spe­­cif­ic pub­lic art­works includ­ing Stream, Green Square, Zet­land, Syd­ney (2022); Par­lia­ment Steps Walk­ing Draw­ing, Mel­bourne (2021); Field Draw­ing #1, May­war Green, Gallery of Mod­ern Art, Bris­bane (2014); and Wave Draw­ings, High­point Shop­ping Cen­tre, Mel­bourne (2013). Pub­lic col­lec­tions include the Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia, Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, Queens­land Art Gallery and Gallery of Mod­ern Art, Hei­de Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, and Dowse Muse­um, Low­er Hutt. Ker­rie Poli­ness is rep­re­sent­ed by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

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Bib­li­og­ra­phy