TONY CURRAN | Bio

Tony Curran (b.1984) is an emerging artist whose paintings, drawings and digital media works explore feelings of our desire to be free in a cybernetically constrained age. His work combines rhetorics of painterliness and web 2.0 aesthetics through what he calls GUI (Graphical-User-Interface) abstraction. The digital wiggle is an enduring motif in Curran’s work and is anchored in his drawing practices on mobile devices. His deep interest in colour, combined with the digital wiggle provides an improvisational foil for systems-based and process-oriented art making.

Originally born in Sydney, Curran lives and works in Canberra, ACT. He has been a finalist of numerous prestigious awards including the Archibald Prize (2015), the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2014), the Mosman Art Prize (2008), the Bayside Acqusitive Art Prize (2018) and the Swan Hill Print and Drawing Award (2018). His work is held in the collections of Artbank, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, Charles Sturt University and the Museum of the Riverina. In 2016, Curran was awarded a Visiting Artist Fellowship to collaborate with the Research School of Computer Science at the Australian National University, where he continues to teach Painting, Foundation Studies and Art History and Theory. He was awarded a PhD in Fine Art from Charles Sturt University in 2015.