Alan Constable

Alan Constable (born 1956) is an Australian artist well known for his ceramic sculptural depictions of photographic cameras.

He participated in his first group exhibition in 1987 at St Martin's Theatre Gallery in South Yarra, Melbourne and shortly thereafter he began regularly working at Arts Project Australia (APA), an organisation devoted to supporting and promoting artists with an intellectual disability.

Although Constable received no formal training, his participation in the studio program at APA gave him access to fine art materials and the informal tuition provided by the practicing artists employed by the organisation.

Constable has worked principally from his Northcote-based studio at Arts Project Australia since 1991, gaining critical success as a multi-disciplinary artist proficient in a wide diversity of media including pastel, gouache, paint and ceramics.

Following the commencement of his work at APA he began exhibiting regularly in Australia and participated in his first international group exhibitions in 1995, in the US and Belgium.

Both Constable's lack of formal training and disability has identified him as one of the key figures within the Outsider Art category in Australia.

This categorisation is confirmed by his repeated inclusion in Outsider Art exhibitions and fairs, both in Australia and in the USA [see Exhibitions].

He has been working on his series of ceramic cameras since 2007 and works from this series were represented at the 2009 Australian Ceramic Triennale in Sydney and featured in a solo exhibition of his work, Clay Cameras, at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne.

However, in recent years his work has also achieved critical success in the wider sphere of the Australian contemporary art institution and his first solo exhibition occurred at Helen Gory Galerie, a commercial art gallery located in Melbourne, in 2009.

Alan Constable Clay Cameras, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne, 2009

Viewfinder: Alan Constable Survey, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2011

Constable, Stills Gallery, Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales, 2011

Alan Constable/Ten Cameras, Curated by Ricky Swallow, South Willard, Los Angeles, 2013

Chicago Expo: Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Chicago, USA, 2013

Nocturne, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2013

Manningham Victorian Ceramic Art Award, Manningham Art Gallery, 2013

Thirteen works from this series were acquired for the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014, and appeared in their blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art, Melbourne Now, in the same year.

Constable was born in Melbourne.

His "fascination with light and love of cameras" began at the age of eight, when he would construct intricate replicas of cameras, made from cereal cartons and glue.

As artist Peter Atkins states, this early "interest in cameras – objects that are totally reliant on vision to find, frame and capture an image – is not without irony," due to the fact that Constable is both legally blind and deaf.

This exhibition was quickly followed by his inclusion in the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014, a solo exhibition in Los Angeles curated by the artist Ricky Swallow in 2013 and his inclusion an exhibition curated by the Museum of Everything at the Kunsthal, Rotterdam, in 2016.

A multi-disciplinary artist, Constable's drawings and paintings are typically depictions of landscapes, solitary figures and animals, which are sourced from expired books and magazines, such as National Geographic.

His style for both his two dimensional and ceramic works has been attributed to the way in which he utilises his extremely limited sight to focus on a singular aspect of a scene or subject.

This stylistic focus, the selection of his subject matter and the tactile nature of his works (which often feature the imprint of the artist's fingers on the clay surface) imply a close personal relationship between the artist and the works; as David Hurlston, Curator of Australian Art at the NGV, notes, the ceramic cameras "become a very personal and touching tribute. [They] contain traces of humanity."

His work has been compared that of Claes Oldenburg, in that both artists transform utilitarian objects by "altering scale and exploiting differences in materials" and former NGV curator Alex Baker has compared his work to that of Philip Guston, stating that "if Philip Guston was a ceramicist, these are the kind of objects he would make."

Polaroid Project, Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Horsham, 2014

Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, 2014

Melbourne Art Fair 2014, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne (1994 – 2014)

Renegades: Outsider Art, Moree Plains Gallery, NSW, 2014

Into the Vault and Out of the Box, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2014

Renegades: Outsider Art, The Arts Centre Gold Coast, Queensland, 2014

Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, 2014

Alan Constable: Close –Up, Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane, 2015

Alan Constable, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, 2015

It takes more than 140 characters to write a novel, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2015

Victorian Craft Award, Craft, Melbourne, 2015

Gold Coast International Ceramic Art Award, Gold Coast City Gallery, Gold Coast, 2016

Clay: it's a matter of substance, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2016

Museum of Everything, Kunsthal Rotterdam, 2016

Tell 'em I'm dead, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne, 2016