CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Michael Simms

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*News Update*
Michael Simms has been announced as a finalist in the 2024 John Leslie Art Prize

Congratulations to Michael Simms who has been announced as a finalist in both the 2024 Hornsby Art Prize and in the 2024 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award.

Michael Simms painting "Running Man" has been shortlisted for the Calleen Art Award, at Cowra Regional Gallery. It runs from 28 September through to 17 November. More info here.

Michael Simms is an award winning painter based in Sydney. Having completed degrees in both psychology and film at Flinders University before winning a scholarship to study art at the Julian Ashton Art School, Michael's practice brings together his interest in classical art and contemporary human behaviour to reveal hidden truths about his subjects. His depictions of the human figure pay homage to academic conventions within fine art (the reclining nude/the society portrait) while also reinterpreting them in the context of modern life.

His more recent series of intimately scaled landscape paintings were created during the artist's travels to the Broken Hill region. As a site that holds personal significance for him, the resulting artworks reflect both a sense of hereditary exploration and a subjective appreciation of the areas unique topography. Within his superbly crafted distillations of the regions haunting and cinematic vastness, Simms skilfully captures the essence of a fleeting moment. Sensitively observing the dramatic quality of light so unique to the Australian outback, these images are also infused with a psychological charge, blurring of the boundaries between reality and the dreamlike.

'To immerse yourself in the art of Michael Simms is to enter into a deeply intimate exploration of the psychological and physiological aspects of the human condition, the misty haze of memory, and the way we exist in space and time. More interested in capturing a sense of feeling rather than place, Simms has imbued his canvases with profound emotion, often placing his own naked form within the landscape to great effect. In the most striking pieces, we see the artist thrown, flung and falling as he grapples with past histories and present isolation in beautiful yet hostile environments. They are a stark reminder of both the fragility and resilience of the mind and body.'
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Kate McAuley, 2022

ARTIST PROFILE:
Michael Simms is a Sydney-based figurative painter with a Diploma of Fine Arts from the Julian Ashton Art School. In 2019, he was awarded a residency at the New York Academy of Art in Tribeca, Manhattan. In 2018, he won both the Art Society of NSW Young Artist Prize and the SBS Portrait Prize. He has been a finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2024, 2017), the John Leslie Art Prize (2024), the Calleen Art Award (2024, 2021), the Hornsby Art Prize (2024), the Archibald Prize (2023), the Mosman Art Prize (2022, 2017), the National Portrait Gallery Darling Prize (2022), the Clayton UTZ Art Prize (2021), the Manning Naked and Nude Art Prize (2021), the Lethbridge Small Scale Art Award (2021), the Shirley Hannan Portrait Prize (2020), the Percival Portrait Prize (2020), the Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2020), the SBS Portrait Prize (2020), the Lester Prize (2020), the Kennedy Art Award (2019), the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (2019), the Lethbridge Art Award (2019), the Percival Tucker Portrait Prize (2018), and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize (2017). His work has also been featured in Amber Creswell Bell's latest book 'About Face: Contemporary portrait painting in Australia and New Zealand'. He has undertaken several artist residencies including at Bundanon Trust studios Artist Residency, Illaroo NSW and Gang Gang Artist Residency, NSW in 2024. His work is included in private collections, including the Elliott Eyes Collection, the Thomas Keneally Centre at the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, Cliftons Venues, Sydney, and YSC Consulting, Sydney.