About
Pam Wragg is a highly respected and prolific contemporary artist, renowned for her practice which extends across sculpture, ceramics, painting and photography. Linking this diversity is a primary interest in the interaction of colour, form, space and materials, and how these relationships can be brought into an active and rhythmic whole.
This interplay has driven a chain of dynamic and formal investigations in Wragg’s work since the mid-1970s. Always open to possibility, today her practice moves between strong statements in welded steel, bronze and marble to the immediacy of ceramics, collage and photomontage.
Although Wragg’s work sits within the modernist tradition of formal experiments, her artistic interests are varied. The formalist sculpture of Anthony Caro and David Smith is an obvious influence, as is the lineage of post-cubist abstract painting, as well as arte povera and minimalism in the exploration of found objects and materials. Since 2010, she has concentrated on painting without completely relinquishing her interest in strong forms and structure.
Pam Wragg’s formal education was at Prahran College of Advanced Education under the renowned sculptor John Davis and photographer Athol Smyth, as well as further study in sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts and ceramics at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
“Pam Wragg is one of the best kept secrets of contemporary Australian sculpture. Her most recent work is strong and contemplative, yet somewhat inward-looking, bridging the modern with the contemporary. She is as concerned with the space of the mind, in which the cry for life resides filled with energy, as she is with physical realities.”
— Ian Findlay-Brown, Editor, World Sculpture News, 2004
Curriculum Vitae
Education
1990 – 92 Bachelor of Arts (Ceramics), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
1977 – 78 Postgraduate Diploma (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts
1974 – 76 Diploma of Sculpture, Prahran College of Advanced Education
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2018 Langford 120, Melbourne
2010 Kazari Gallery, Melbourne
2007 Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne
2005 Hamilton Art Gallery, Hamilton
2005 Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat
2005 Mildura Arts Centre's Regional Gallery, Mildura
2005 Atrium, Bayside City Council, Sandringham
2004 Shepparton Art Museum, Shepparton
2004 Central Goldfields Art Gallery, Maryborough
2003 Downstairs 45, Melbourne
1996 West Space Gallery, Melbourne
1996 Makers Gallery, Melbourne
1988 Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne
1981 Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne
Selected Group Exhibitions
2018 Deakin University: Contemporary Small Sculpture Award
2018 Monash Gallery of Art Melbourne: Legacy Photographic Exhibition
2009 Deakin University: Contemporary: Small Sculpture Award
2009 Toyota Spirit Gallery, Port Melbourne: Toyota Hybrid Sculpture
2009 Toorak Village Sculpture Award
2008 Yering Station Sculpture Award
2008 Toyota Spirit Gallery, Port Melbourne: Cryptozoology
2008 Kazari Gallery, Melbourne: Sculptural Works
2008 Red Gallery, Melbourne: The 2 Pi r Group
2007 Yering Station Sculpture Award
2006 Yering Station Sculpture Award
2006 Toyota Spirit Gallery, Port Melbourne: Symbiotics
2006 Span Gallery, Melbourne: The 2 Pi r Group,
2006 Montalto Vineyard and Olive Grove, Red Hill South: Montalto Sculpture Prize
2005 Arnold Bloch Leibler Sculpture Exhibition, Melbourne
2005 Yering Station Sculpture Award
2005 Red Gallery, Melbourne: Dialogue – The 2 Pi r Group
2005 Montalto Vineyard and Olive Grove, Red Hill South: Montalto Sculpture Prize
2004 Yering Station Sculpture Award
2004 Bendigo Art Gallery: Robert Jacks Drawing Prize
2004 Taylor, R. ‘The Silence of The Studio’, World Sculpture News, Vol. 10, No. 1, Winter
2003 Monash Prato Centre, Prato: The 2 Pi r Group
2002 Women’s Art Register’, The Bulletin.
2002 Span Gallery, Melbourne: The 2 Pi r Group
1998 Span Gallery, Melbourne: The 2 Pi r Group
1998 Piers, J. 2 Pi r Catalogue.
1996 Access Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria and Regional Galleries: Mixed Platter
1996 Castlemaine Art Museum: Sculpture No
1996 Jelbart, M.L. ‘Arts Review’, ABC.
1996 Germaine, M. A Dictionary of Women Artists, Craftsman House, Australia
1992 Blaxland Gallery, Melbourne
1992 Swanston Street Gallery, Melbourne
1992 The Meat Market Craft Centre, Melbourne
1991 Swanston Street Gallery, Melbourne
1990 RMIT Gallery, Melbourne
1989 Westpac Gallery, Victorian Art Centre, Melbourne: Don’t Put Your Torté On the Stage,
1988 Exhibition Building, Melbourne: ACAF 1
1988 Faust, B. ‘Review’, The Age
1987 Westpac Gallery, Melbourne: Personal Views
1985 Westpac Gallery, Melbourne: Views by Contemporary Artists
1985 Pascoe, J. ‘Views by Contemporary Artists’, Benalla Art Gallery
1984 National Gallery of Victoria, Australian Sculpture Triennial
1984 Sturgeon, G. Australian Sculpture Triennial, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria.
1982 Niagara Gallery, Melbourne
1981 Jelbart, M.L. ‘Gillian Waite Shows’, Arts Victoria, November.
1979 Victorian College of the Arts Gallery: Travelling Art Fellowship
1979 Sturgeon, G. ‘Man in a Metal Mask’, The Age, p. 2
1978 Sturgeon, G. ‘Arts Review’, The Australian
1978 Lynn, E. ‘Sculpture at Mildura’, Quadrant, vol. 22, no. 5, p. 42.
1978 Mildura Arts Centres Regional Gallery: Seventh Sculpture Triennial
1976 Gryphon Gallery, Melbourne Publications
Prizes
2018 Finalist: Deakin University: Contemporary Small Sculpture Award
2015 Sculpture Now
Collections
Art Gallery of Ballarat
Hamilton Art Gallery Mildura Arts Centre's Regional Gallery Monash Gallery of Art Shepparton Art
Museum Reprented in private collections across Australia
Awards Commissions
Banks Road Winery