Marion Borgelt

Marion Borgelt (b.1954) is a contemporary Australian artist based in Sydney. While originally trained as a painter, she also works in other media such as installation and mixed media. During the 1970s Borgelt trained at the South Australian School of Arts, the Torrens College of Advanced Education and the New York Studio School.

Early life

Marion Borgelt grew up near Nhill, in the Wimmera district of Victoria. The Wimmera landscape so apparently replete of life, was interpreted by Sidney Nolan in the 1940s when he was posted there in the army; his images soon became inexplicably linked to avant-garde art practice, as much as his personal response to place. They also became icons of modernism in Australia. The Wimmera is also a vital source for artist Philip Hunter (b.1958) who grew up in Donald, a small town there; in his work he challenges meaning in art, and the experience of landscape as image and poetic form. Marion Borgelt attributes her initial interest in the cyclical nature of the land, to her early experience of the Wimmera landscape. She explains how her early childhood experiences in rural Australia remain integral to her art practice, yet she does not want to create a narrative. As for the landscape itself, she “was always both impressed and haunted by the vast flat open space of the Wimmera. In summer it felt like we lived under the sun. It was hot and dusty, wheat fields shimmering as far as the eye could see. It is a place where the earth meets the sky with nothing much in between. There were, of course, the wonderful vernacular structures of the wheat silos, which dotted the horizon. I called them ‘The Cathedrals of the Wimmera’. When I was about seventeen, I was desperate to leave.”

During the 1980s, Borgelt taught at the Canberra School of Art and the College of Fine Arts. She was a guest lecturer at Newcastle University, Macquarie University, Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery and the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at the University of New South Wales.

Borget was the recipient of the Moet & Chandon Art Fellowship. In 1982 Borgelt participated at the Biennale of Sydney and three years later in Australian Perspecta. Together with Jenny Watson, Borgelt represented Australia at the Sixth Indian Triennale

In 1989 Borgelt won a French government artist's residency and moved to Paris the same year where she lived for the next nine years. While in Paris, Borgelt collaborated with Rene Taze etching atelier and later on with master printer Fred Genis.

Work

It is in Paris where Borgelt created a large body of work related to the notion of primordial. Her visual explorations of this notion are reflected in the works such as Primordial Logic and Primordial One: Figures F, B, E, A.

In her work Anima/Animus: Splitting Into One No. III, there is a reference to a Jungian theory of the archetypes.^[1] What is noticeable in these works is the presence of the circle shape. This shape often occurs in Borgelt’s oeuvre. While various shapes have different significance for Borgelt, the circle, as she states,“ […] embraces to me the most, and the oval too to a certain degree, but the circle seems to represent to me ‘totality.’ Because the circle is […] a contained thing without […] any tension.”.^[2]

Borgelt’s French palette mainly features the blacks, the reds and the whites. Victoria Lynn notes an interesting point about Borgelt’s work when she writes that, “Energy in her paintings can be as soft as a feather or as turbulent as and fierce as a violent storm.” ^[3]

Borgelt regularly exhibits in Australia and overseas and has held numerous one-person exhibitions. She has also participated in a number of group exhibitions on national and international levels. Borgelt has won the Peter Brown Memorial Travelling Art Scholarship, French Government Art Fellowship and Residency, Dyson Bequest for work and research in Paris and Australia Council Creative Arts Fellowship. In addition, in 1996 Borgelt was the first Australian recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award.^[4]

Borgelt's work is included in a number of public and private art collections including Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Parliament House Collection, Powerhouse Museum, University of Sydney, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Bata Shoe Museum, Limerick City Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum and Auckland Museum of Contemporary Art.

Borgelt has also been involved in public commissions. These include a foyer installation Primordial Alphabet and Rhythm for News Limited in Sydney and commemorative installation Man’s Destiny Resides in the Sole for Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto . In the 2006 Borgelt had a productive collaboration with Adriano Berengo Glass.

The turn of a new millennium have also marked a change in Borgelt's palette. The reds that predominated during the 1990s, were now substituted with the choice including the yellows, the blues and the purples. Representatives from this period are works such as Liquid Light: 32 Degrees and Strobe Series No. 6.

Borgelt travels extensively around the world, and the experiences that she gains through these represent continueous sources of inspiration. Her exhibition Sol y Sombra, for instance, which was held in the Sherman Galleries in Sydney, have drawn the inspiration from her travel to Spain. The natural beauty of her native Australia has also been a strong source of inspiration for Borgelt and it has found its expression in an abstract language of early Borgelt’s works.

Anna Voigt highlights an important point concerning Borgelt’s art practice when she writes that, “The journey of the spirit and of artmaking are inseparable realities for Marion Borgelt.”.^[5]

References

1. ^ Jung at art, Sydney Morning Herald
2. ^ Marion Borgelt in “Interview with the artist Marion Borgelt” conducted by Katharine R. M. Buljan on 16 October 2002
3. ^ Marion Borgelt, Victoria Lynn, Craftsman House: Roseville East, NSW, 1996, p. 8
4. ^ Marion Borgelt at the Pollock Krasner Foundation
5. ^ Anna Voigt, “Marion Borgelt,” in Australian Painting Now, edited by Laura Murray Cree and Nevill Drury, published by Craftsman House, Sydney, 2000, p. 52

External links

• Marion Borgelt website

See also

• Art of Australia

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