Nell (born 1975) is an Australian artist working acrossperformance,installation, video, painting and sculpture. In 2013, she won theUniversity of Queensland Self-Portrait Award. In 2017, she was inducted into the Maitland City Hall of Fame in the category of The Arts.
Nell lives and works inSydney.
Nell was born in 1975 inMaitland, New South Wales.[1] Her wife is the celebrity chefKylie Kwong.[2][3] She practisesBuddhist philosophy.[4][5]
Nell studied underLindy Lee atSydney College of the Arts, theUniversity of Sydney (1995), withJoan Jonas andJohn Baldessari at theUniversity of California Los Angeles (1996) and withAnnette Messager at theÉcole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2006).
Nell's work often engages with binaries – life and death, happiness and sadness, dark and light.[6][7] She draws on imagery fromrock 'n roll, and employs a lexicon of repeated motifs in her work includingsmiley faces,lightning bolts, clouds,rain drops, suns, and faces.[8][9][5]
Nell's work has been included in over 200 exhibitions in Australia and abroad. In 1999, early in her exhibiting career, her work was selected forPrimavera, an exhibition of notable Australian contemporary artists under 35 years old, at theMuseum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) inSydney.[10]
Around this time she also staged exhibitions at Galerie Y-Burg, Vrieshuis Amerika,Amsterdam (1998), and with the Indian artistNeha Choksi at4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (1999) and inByculla, Mumbai (2000). Nell's first institutional exhibition was mounted at theArt Gallery of New South Wales in 2001.
In 2011, Nell was commissioned by theMuseum of Old and New Art, Hobart, to produce the exhibition Let There Be Robe.[11] Two performance works that took place in multiple iterations and venues were also commissioned, Chanting to Amps (2012) and It's a Long Way to the Top (2011, 2012).[12]
In 2012,Jean-Hubert Martin curated Nell's work into the exhibition Theatre of the World atMONA inHobart,[citation needed] in the same year staging her homecoming show, Home Town Girl Has Wet Dream atMaitland Regional Art Gallery.[13] In 2013, Martin put on another exhibition of her work atLa Maison Rouge, Paris.[citation needed]
Nell has collaborated with Australian fashion designersRomance Was Born. In 2014, the collaboration was exhibited at theNational Gallery of Victoria in 2011-12 released through the label as The Oracle collection.[14][15][16] This collection and collaboration was named "Masterpiece of Australian Fashion" for the first decade of this century byThe Monthly magazine.[17]
Nell often works outside the gallery, staging performances and installations in a variety of settings. In 2014, she presented work atGlastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts in England, and in 2015 at Performance Space, Sydney as part of their Day for Night festival of queer performance.[18]
Nell was included in the 2016 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at theArt Gallery of South Australia with a major installation titledThe Wake.[19]The Wake was subsequently acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia.[20]The Wake is the subject of a book, with text by Julie Ewington.[21] Also in 2016,Shepparton Art Museum hosted an eponymously titled survey exhibition of Nell's works.[22][23][24]
Nell's work was included in the 25th anniversary edition of thePrimavera exhibition in late 2016, first at the MCA in Sydney and afterwards touring regional centres.[10]
In 2017, Nell was commissioned by theNational Gallery of Victoria inMelbourne to make an outdoor sculpture to be permanently installed in their sculpture garden. Her work was included in the inaugural The National, a biennale of New Australian Art, at theMuseum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. A solo exhibition, WORDS + CROSSES, was held at Ramp Gallery,Waikato Institute of Technology inHamilton, New Zealand.[25]
In 2018 she mounted a solo exhibition at the Walkway Art Gallery inBordertown, South Australia.[1]
In 2019, a solo exhibition featuring paintings, sculptures andbrooches made in collaboration with New Zealand jeweller Neil Adcock was staged at the STATION gallery inCarriageworks as part ofSydney Contemporary art fair.[5]
Nell has undertaken residencies at theBritish Academy of Arts in Rome (2003), in Beijing withRed Gate Gallery (2005), at theAustralian National University, Canberra (2007) andArtspace Sydney (2016).
In 2002, she travelled toRavenna, Italy, on The Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists.
In 2001 Nell won the People's Choice Award in theWoollahra Small Sculpture Prize. In 2005, 2011 and 2013 she was Finalist in theBlake Prize.
Nell won the 2013 University of Queensland Self-Portrait Award for a video performance work.[26][27][28]
In 2017 Nell was inducted into the Maitland City Hall of Fame in the category of The Arts alongside previous inducteesJohn Bell AO OBE andRuth Cracknell AM.[29][30][31]
Since 2017, she has been a resident at theCarriageworks studios inRedfern, Sydney. Her great-grandfather worked at theEveleigh railyards at the same location as aboilermaker, and a great uncle as adraughtsman there.