Brigid Hanrahan

Brigid Hanrahan (born 1972) is an Australian artist who is best known for her delicate line drawings of dancers from the Australian Ballet. She has worked from her Northcote-based studio at Arts Project Australia since 1999, where she has also exhibited regularly. Her works have been included in two significant collections - the Stuart Purves Collection (Australian Galleries) and the Peter Fay Collection (National Gallery of Australia) both of which have toured nationally to major Australian art institutions. Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Tallis Foundation.
Career, themes and style
Although best known for her drawings, Hanrahan works across a range of mediums including painting and ceramics. Her subject matter varies, but she usually focuses on figurative works. Her series of drawings depicting dancing figures inspired by the Australian Ballet are her most recognisable works, and they provide a point of interest due to their composition, which adopts the classical technique - referred to as the ‘affetti’ - for conveying both the movement of the dancers and their relationship to each other via the details of the body; the angles given to limbs, the tilt of the heads and direction of the eyes. These techniques were first described by the sixteenth-century Italian writer Georgio Vasari and are considered integral to the composition and depiction of movement in Renaissance painting. Hanrahan's use of this compositional technique is skilful and all the more interesting due to her own lack of formal training; it is unlikely that she has been schooled in this method of composition, it is an instinctual aspect of her practice. This is in keeping with Hanrahan's categorisation as an ‘Outsider Artist’ and inclusion in exhibitions of this genre of works.
Since 1999 Hanrahan has worked at a studio located within Arts Project Australia (APA), an organisation devoted to supporting and promoting artists with an intellectual disability. Although she has received little formal training, her participation in the studio program at APA has provided her with access to fine art materials and the informal tuition provided by the practicing artists employed by the organisation. Her work has been included in two large-scale travelling exhibitions, The Stuart Purves National Touring Exhibition and Home Sweet Home: Works from the Peter Fay Collection, National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition and has been acquired for the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Tallis Foundation.
Selected group exhibitions
Verdant Garden, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne, 2016-2017
Generations, Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne, 2015
Drawn Together, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2015
Now the heart is filled with fold as if it were a purse, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2014
Small Universe, No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne, 2014
World In My Eyes, C3 Gallery, Abbotsford, Melbourne, 2013
Walking the Line, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2013
Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, 2012
In the making, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2012
Movement & Emotion, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2012
This Sensual World, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2012
2009 Field Art Exhibition, Gasworks Arts Park, Albert Park, 2009
Snapshot, ACGA Gallery, Federation Square, Melbourne, 2009
Connected 09, Black Box, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, 2009
Reinvention: Creativity and Self Identity, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne, 2009
Small Works on Paper, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2009
Pearls of Arts Project Australia: The Stuart Purves Collection, national touring exhibition, 2007-2009
Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, 2008
Short Stories, Tall Tales and the Way They Wore Them, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2008
A Lucid Moment, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2007
Connected07, The Atrium, Federation Square, Melbourne, 2007
In Everyone's Company, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne, 2007
Yours, Mine and Ours: 50 Years of ABC TV, Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest, 2006
Connected 06, The Atrium, Federation Square, Melbourne, 2006
Sydney Art on Paper Fair, Byron Kennedy Hall, Sydney, 2005
Home Sweet Home: Works from the Peter Fay Collection, National Gallery of Australia Travelling exhibition (Australian and New Zealand), 2004-2005
Printed Matter, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2004
A Sense of Place, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2003
Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, 2000
Eleven Artists, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne
La Femme, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 1999
Collections
National Gallery of Australia
The Tallis Foundation

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