Ivan Durrant

Ivan Durrant is an Australian painter, performance artist and writer.

Born in Melbourne in 1947, Ivan Durrant was one of seven children.

His father suffered from alcoholism, a factor leading to the decision by Ivan's 22-year-old mother to place the children into state care.

From ages seven through 15, Durrant was raised in an orphanage in Brighton, Victoria.

He was dealt regular beatings, and suffered emotional abuse - "even medical experimentation. He can remember being injected with all sorts of things, even when he wasn't sick".

Whilst still alive, neither of Durrant's parents ever visited their children in the orphanage.

During those years, Durrant spent his summers on farms where he was billeted to work for the summers.

It was during that period that Durrant realise his fondness for birds and animals Durrant says that he has "always had a love of looking at the structure of animals".

Ivan began drawing during his years at the orphanage, with his art providing some social advantage for him.

"The 16-year old senior boys, they would look after me and I wouldn't be bullied because I could do drawings in their books for them, so art became my thing".

Durrant's ability to draw developed into an interest in painting during his teenage years.

1968 - 1970: Farm Life

Georges Mora, of Tolarno Galleries, St Kilda was among the first to see potential in Durrant's work, giving him $300 in cash to buy paints, and his first exhibition in 1970.

Durrant's painting technique began in a childlike, folksy, naïve art style, evolving into paintings of extreme Photorealism, which has come to be referred to "supraphotolism" (meaning to work 'above and beyond the photo'), and sculptures of illusionistic still-lives of butchered meats, pigs’ heads and all.

Durrant spent a short time working in a prosthetics laboratory at Royal Melbourne Hospital and was able to create lifelike body parts.

This skill was carried over into an ability to create convincingly accurate sculptures of ears, hands, pig heads and various cuts of meat.

Durrant's most recent works explore the colours and action of Australian Rules football.

His work has ranged from paintings to photography, public performance and installation art, short films and sculpture.

1970-1972: Flinders Horses and Landscapes - reflections of the period during which Durrant lived in the coastal town of Flinders, Victoria.

Durrant is renowned for confronting the public through film, sculpture, performance exhibitions, and social realist paintings of the 1970s and 1980s.

1973: Unreal Realism - first movement into Realism (arts)

1974: Movie stars period

Known for creating art with "great shock value", such as the 1975 "Slaughtered Cow Happening" outside the National Gallery of Victoria, Durrant is often described as the enfant terrible of Australian art.

The larger proportion of Durrant's work consists of paintings using a self-developed style of "Super-Realism".

Durrant now resides in Blairgowrie, Victoria, and his works are held in many public collections.

1975: Jockeys - First Photorealism show

1976: New York - Awarded Art Council of Australia Artist in Residence, New York City

1978: Butcher shop and Pigs Heads Exhibition - Beginnings of Meat period

1979: Meat Paintings

1981: Meat Paintings, Hawthorn Art Gallery - Photographic Exhibition of Meat

1982: Hamilton - Travelling Exhibition of Meat Paintings; United Artists Gallery Beginnings - more meat paintings

1984: United Artists Gallery - Fuck Art Period: Graffiti photographs of Pine Gap and Meat - response to changes in Uranium Policy.

Included Uranium, you're standing in it exhibition.

1986: United Artists Gallery - Chernobyl Deformities Exhibition - Deformed babies theme

1988: United Artists Gallery & Regional Gallery Tour - Interiors of Sheds

1992: Westpac Gallery - Retrospective Exhibition

1994: Survey of 70s Racing Paintings

1995: Australia Felix Arts Festival, Benalla and Sheds

2002 - 2005: Cows

2007–present: Boundary Rider