Philip Hunter, best known for his work as a painter while also a printmaker, was born in the Wimmera in 1958. His father worked in the family automotive business and his mother was a schoolteacher in Donald. The family relocated to Melbourne in the late 1960s. An easel given to Hunter as a gift from his grandfather had sparked his interest in art and Hunter later joined the drawing department at the (then) Prahan College of Advanced Education in 1977, where an artists-in-residency program enabled Hunter to meet international artists such as Kenneth Nolan, Carl Andre, Patrick Caulfield and John Walker. It was through the support of Walker that Hunter was introduced to the art dealer David Rosenthal, who was a partner in Axiom Galleries (later Christine Abrahams Gallery) in Richmond. Hunter’s first exhibition was to be held at Axiom in 1982 alongside Walker as well as the artist Phillip Guston. In the same year, Hunter was included in a major survey of young Melbourne painters at the Monash University Gallery that was curated by Memory Holloway. Due to his work in this exhibition, Hunter received the Ansett Art Award and he was selected for the Australian Perspecta early the following year.
Ever since Hunter first exhibited in 1982, he has participated in a long list of solo and group exhibitions. Notably in 1984, Memory Holloway selected Hunter for inclusion in ‘The Australians’ exhibition at C.D.S. Gallery in New York City, where his work appeared alongside that of artists such as Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Peter Booth and Stieg Persson. Later, in 1986, Hunter and other noted artists including Howard Arkley, Rossylnd Piggott and Gareth Sansom were represented in the exhibition ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem,’ curated by the artist Geoff Lowe and held at the Gertrude Street Gallery, Fitzroy. Further exhibitions that have highlighted Hunter’s work have included ‘The Plains: Wimmera and the Imaging of Australian Landscape, Philip Hunter and Sir Sidney Nolan’ (2001) at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, ‘Imaging the Apple’ (2005) which travelled to sites in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania and ‘Between the Lines (Philip Hunter Drawings)’ (2010) at Latrobe University.
As a modernist landscape painter, the Wimmera has been a key source of inspiration for Hunter’s work and a region to which the artist returns each year. While Hunter’s work has focussed on the depiction of landscapes, rather than imitating a geographical location, the impression of a landscape is conveyed through the artist’s use of line, forms, texture and a restricted colour palette of earth colours and white.
Throughout his career, Philip Hunter has been presented with multiple awards and commissions, including a Visual Arts Board Grant from the Australia Council in 1984 and from the Print Council of Australia in 1992.
Hunter’s work is widely represented in prominent public and private collections across Australia. This list includes the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the Baillieu Myer Collection of the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria, the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, RACV Collection, Melbourne, Macquarie Bank, Sydney and the Shell Australia Collection.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2012
- Last updated:
- 2012
