Wendy Sharpe Spellbound

Wendy Sharpe is celebrated for her expressive works that observe and celebrate the human condition. Her career catapulted when, in 1996, she won the Archibald Prize – the first time a self-portrait by a woman took out the award. In 1999, she became the first woman since the Second World War to be appointed an official war artist by the Australian War Memorial, when she was posted to East Timor. Over the past four decades, Sharpe has held over 70 solo exhibitions and won numerous other prizes, including the Portia Geach Memorial Award. Through her passionate approach to art, she has also highlighted critical social issues, from women’s health to the rights of asylum seekers.

Wendy Sharpe: Spellbound is a sumptuous aesthetic journey into the nature of creativity. Composed of drawings, sketchbooks, artist-made books, paintings, ceramics, sculptural forms and site-specific wall murals, it creates a complete artistic creation or gesamtkunstwerk (a German word meaning ‘total work of art’).

The artist herself will also regularly be in residence, creating art within a special space in the gallery that partially reconstructs her own Sydney studio.