ANNABEL NOWLAN
Young NSW, Australia | Born 1956
Annabel Nowlan is an Australian contemporary artist whose work explores the landscape, rural history and the complex relationship between people and the land. Born on a farm in south-western New South Wales, Nowlan draws strongly on her rural upbringing and her family's long connection with the farming district of Bimbi, where her Irish convict ancestors settled and successive generations of the family farmed.
Nowlan studied at the National Art School in Sydney, completing an Art Certificate in 1988, followed by a Bachelor of Arts at the University of New South Wales in 1992 and Honours at Sydney College of the Arts in 1997. She completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, in 2002.
Although predominantly a painter, Nowlan has developed a highly individual mixed-media practice. She works with unconventional and often discarded materials including aluminium, scrap metal, found tin, rivets, tarpaulin, natural minerals and recycled objects. Weathered, corroded and marked surfaces are deliberately incorporated into her work, reflecting her fascination with materials that change through age and exposure to the elements.
The Australian landscape is central to Nowlan's work, but rather than depicting conventional landscape views, she examines the traces left upon the land by human activity. Farm structures, fences, wire knots, water tanks, mining maps, agricultural machinery and other remnants of rural life become part of her visual language. Through these elements she explores memory, settlement, agriculture and attempts to control or reshape the natural environment.
Nowlan has exhibited extensively in Australia for more than three decades, presenting numerous solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and regional galleries. Her work has also been shown internationally, and she has undertaken artist residencies in Australia, France, Greece and the United States. Her work is represented in public, corporate and private collections including Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery, Mildura Regional Gallery, the Print Council of Australia, University of Wollongong and the Qantas Collection.
Her continuing interest in regional Australia has been particularly evident in works associated with the Riverina and her family property at Bimbi. Her Unfinished Maps exhibition at Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery explored place, memory and the rural agricultural landscape, themes that continue to underpin her practice.
Nowlan continues to exhibit and develop her distinctive mixed-media practice, using aluminium, recycled metal and other found materials. Her work reflects an enduring interest in surface, history, memory and the Australian landscape.
