Ingo Kleinert has contributed to the Canberra and Australian art world as an educator, an arts administrator, a curator and most importantly as an artist. Kleinert has exhibited regularly in solo and group exhibitions since the mid1970s. Working across photography, sculptural assemblages, installations and film, his artwork is concerned with place, memory and history.
Biography 581 words
Ingo Kleinert was born in Bunzlau, Germany in 1941 and migrated to Australia with his family in 1949. Educated at Eltham High School Kleinert came into contact with the Montsalvat artists’ colony and local art teachers: Hal Peck, Gareth Jones-Roberts and Danila Vassilief. He studied at Caulfield Technical College (now Monash University) and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Initially Ingo Kleinert lived and worked in Central Victoria before moving overseas where he lived in London and travelled extensively in Europe. Kleinert became a Lecturer at the Canberra School of Art in 1976 and subsequently Senior Lecturer and Head of the Photomedia workshop. Kleinert retired in 1996 to focus on his art practice establishing a studio in Queanbeyan, NSW. He relocated to Hobart in 2013.
Ingo Kleinert held his first solo exhibition at Gallery 99 in Carlton in 1967. Whilst in Europe he established connections with Process Art and the Italian Arte Povera movement. Working in London and in Melbourne he produced ephemeral installations which he documented photographically. Sites in Canberra and outback NSW formed the subject matter of Kleinert’s land-based photography during the 1970s and 1980s. Kleinert directed the Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3 performance festivals in Canberra in 1978, 1980 and 1982. He also produced and directed a tableau film, Matisse: A Tribute to Henry Cartier-Bresson (1987) shown in Australia and overseas. The sculptural assemblages which have formed the focus of Kleinert’s practice since the 1990s are created from weathered wood and corrugated iron gathered in outback NSW. These found materials are seen as autobiographical, evocative of Kleinert’s childhood experiences as a refugee in war-torn Europe.
Ingo Kleinert received grants from the Australia Council and the Arts Council (ACT Division) for the Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3 Performance Festivals. An Australia Council Artists Development Grant in1993 enabled him to retrace his cultural heritage in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Kleinert’s photography has been widely exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Experimental Art Foundation (1974), and the Goethe Institute, Canberra and in group exhibitions at Artspace (1987), Albury Regional Art Centre (now Murray Art Museum Albury) (1989) and the Drill Hall Gallery (1990).Kleinert’s assemblages were first exhibited in Two Reference Points at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space (1989).Since then Kleinert has exhibited regularly with Legge Gallery, Christine Abrahams Gallery and Boutwell Draper Gallery. He has also participated in a number of group exhibitions: Detail, Canberra School of Art Gallery (1990);100% Tracy, Darwin (1993); The Eye of the Dog, Parliament House, Canberra in the National Sculpture Triennial (1995); Breaching the Divide, Goulburn Regional Gallery (1996); Toolangi International Sculpture Event (1996) and Art and Land, a travelling exhibition to South East Asia curated by Noosa Regional Gallery (2000).
Ingo Kleinert has completed several commissions: in 1996 for Nelson Polytechnic /Nelson City Council in New Zealand and In Place –Canberra, Gateway Project, Kingston Foreshore,Canberra in 2004. A triptych from his Speaking of History series is installed in the Bernie Banton Centre in Concorde Hospital, Sydney in 2008. An overview of the artist is provided by Anne Virgo and Jennifer McFarlane in the monograph Ingo Kleinert:Two Decades(SFA Press 2010) edited by Merryn Gates.
Ingo Kleinert is represented in private and corporate collections in Australia and overseas, in University collections and in state and regional galleries. His work is also held by Artbank, Moorilla Estate (now Museum of Old and New Art), the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia and Parliament House, Canberra.
- Writers:
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kleins
- Date written:
- 2015
- Last updated:
- 2015
