Rodney Forbes : in my life
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Artwork
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- Description: Exhibition dates: 13 March to 16 May 2021 Gippsland Art Gallery A showcase of Forbes’ colourful and characteristic practice from 1983 to 2020. Celebrating Rodney Forbes’ unique style of storytelling and his highly distinctive painting style. Over four decades, Forbes has developed his figurative narrative painting and use of flattened perspective. Throughout this exhibition visitors can view works that showcase Forbes’ colourful and characteristic practice from 1983 to 2020. Forbes says of the exhibition, “Thanks to Gippsland Art Gallery and Australian Galleries, Melbourne, for collaborating to bring 40 years of my work together. It will be wonderful to see those old friends again.” Rodney Forbes is represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne. Rodney Forbes is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Federation University Australia.
Twice is lucky, 3 times a charm
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Artwork , Visual art work
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- Description: Exhibition dates: 3 August-13 November 2021 Twice is Lucky, 3 Times a Charm’ is Rodney Forbes’ 20th solo exhibition with Australian Galleries. Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, these vibrant paintings explore fortune, transformation and love. This exhibition features ‘A Submariner Dreams of Home’, winner of the 2020 Maritime Art Prize. Rodney Forbes’ paintings address deeply poignant subject matter through dreamlike and surreal imagery. Figures and objects float against his trademark palette of bright, luminous colours, drawing the viewer in to explore a rich narrative. “Although the subject matter of Forbes’ paintings deals with aspects of the human condition, his paintings contain a degree of humour without which his intensity of vision would degenerate into affected angst. It is his ability to see beneath the surface of human relationships and the domestic environment and then to express that vision with warmth and humour that elevates his work from the drily philosophical or the contrived.” – David Thorp – artist and curator, Director, South London Gallery 1992-2001, Turner Prize Judge This exhibition celebrates Rodney Forbes’ unique style of storytelling and his ability to portray wonder, adventure and the unforeseen through a highly distinctive painting style.
Choice language
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Artwork , Visual art work
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- Description: Exhibition dates: 28 May-16 June 2019 Australian Galleries Melbourne, 35 Derby Street, Collingwood In 1977 Rodney Forbes was working as a missile systems technician with the Department of Navy. The Vietnam War had wound out to its inglorious conclusion and, disillusioned, he resigned and set off overland across Asia with his wife Rouvé. Encountering civil war in Afghanistan and worsening anti-Western feeling in Iran, they washed up penniless in punk-era London, where Forbes worked as an electronic game machine technician and haunted its art galleries. After a year in England, the pair set off back to Australia via Sri Lanka and Forbes says he can remember the exact moment, on a bumpy bus ride near Colombo, when Rouvé encouraged him to follow his dream of becoming a painter. Back in Australia Forbes enrolled at the legendary Gippsland School of Art, with 24-hour access, no grades and no crit sessions. Three months after finishing, he exhibited his paintings at the Victorian Ministry of the Arts Foyer Gallery in Melbourne. Stuart Purves, from Melbourne’s oldest commercial art gallery, Australian Galleries, spotted the show and invited Forbes to include some works in the gallery’s stock room. A few years later, the gallery gave him his first solo exhibition. The walls were still hot from Australian icon Sidney Nolan’s show, and Forbes says, “It’s hard to describe the nervousness occasioned by hanging as an emerging artist on the same walls as your artistic hero and the greatest painter Australia has produced.” Rodney Forbes’ debut show was a surprise success and he is now mounting his seventeenth solo show at the gallery, in the same room that he inherited from Nolan 30 years ago, “My paintings honour the ways in which people tell stories and the poetry in everyday life” he says, “and that is something I very much admired about Nolan.” CHOICE LANGUAGE is current until 16 June 2019.
Lohan-Tuka: The lost white woman of Gippsland
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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When all the rivers run
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney , Heckenberg, Robyn
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Exchanging Story: Connecting by the printed surface
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney , Yazzie, Melanie
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Ho Chi Minh: My part in his victory
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Arc at 30
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Chippo: A brush with the wal
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Land to light: Photo diaries
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney , Farrugia, Charles
- Date: 2012
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No coyotes no roadrunners
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Rona Green: Surface Value
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Zahidah: Paintings by UAE-based Syrian artist Zahidah Zeytoun Millie
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Zone of Sensation: Finding oneself beyond sight
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Bridging the Gap: Works by the Mainstreet Group
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Cathy Laudenbach: Please be careful
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Charles Farrugia: Micromirror 7
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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End Stage
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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In clocks
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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Kids Cube: Tellers and Listeners
- Authors: Forbes, Rodney
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Visual art work
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