Marnie Wark | Contemporary Artist Specializing in Painting

Wark grew up in the Barossa Valley, South Australia, surrounded by light and seasonal colour. A formative interest in design took her to Milan where she worked as a graphic designer which fed her preoccupation with the concept of negative space. This was her bridge to abstraction. Tension and synergy is evident in all of Wark’s painted acrylic works on canvas, something that she refers to as “the spirit of space”. Recently Wark has painted large public artworks, motivated by a desire to bring a human element to urban architecture. The sameness of the urban environment is the catalyst and abstracted subject. The warmth and organic nature of Wark’s public artwork is heightened when viewed amongst the compounding grey of city streets. Her work pulsates with latent energy, literally wound-up, as each new layer is added. Layers of paint both conceal and reveal. A dialogue begins, one that is not about architecture but the human experience of a lived city. A reminder that sings “I/We exist”. Whether working in the bodily scale of a painting, or punching that graphic into mural-proportions, as she did when commissioned for the American television series Sex and the City (2003), Wark’s unerring sense of design is evident. Wark has also delivered commissioned murals for South Australia’s The Community Store, Murray Street, Nuriootpa (2017) and for The Little Rundle Street Art Project, Little Rundle Street, Adelaide (2016). She has shown across her career with Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane, Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney, Scott Livesey Art Dealer, Melbourne, Peter Walker Fine Art in Adelaide, as well as exhibiting widely in group exhibitions in Australia, as well as Hong Kong and New Zealand.