Ivan Durrant

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

Early years Born in Melbourne in 1947, 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". Durrant's most recent works explore the colours and action of Australian Rules football. In an interview with ABC Online, Durrant's daughter says that installations and performance art were still a very new form of artistic expression, and "to have something as extreme as an animal carcass put at the National Gallery of Victoria was just totally shocking to people". On the morning of 26 May 1975, Beverley was slaughtered in a cattle yard in Wheelers Hill, 'not far from where the Monash Gallery of Art stands today,' was then 'loaded onto a utility van, and with news crew in tow' was driven to the NGV, her carcass dumped in the forecourt. Durrant's daughter states that she once considered such an interpretation (in relation to the Vietnam War) "a bit of a retrospectively applied stretch," but adds that "the cow endures as a metaphor for the inhumanity and carelessness with which we treat life generally and the extent to which we can become complacent and inured to this. Mass public outrage at a cow being slaughtered on the 6p.m. news threw into stark relief our preparedness to overlook far worse horrors." The hand was, in fact, an intricately detailed synthetic polymer resin sculpture.

1976 - "Chopping Block" 16mm filmed pigeon dinner event Twelve guests were invited to a last supper at Durrant's Brighton home where they learned at the table that they were to prepare their own dinner - Durrant's pigeons. Guests were told that if they wished to eat, they had to slaughter their own pigeon at the table. This event, like other similar happenings demonstrated the point that "as humans we tend to dissociate animals from the whole process of killing". and

Year Prize Name 1975 Awarded Maude Vizard-Wholohan Prize, SA Awarded Caulfield Arts Centre Acquisition Art Prize 1976 Art Council of Australia Artist in Residence, New York City 1980 Awarded Australian Film Institute Awards "Best Experimental Film": Self Portrait Blood Red 1994–1995 Artistic Director Australia Felix Arts Festival, Benalla 2009 Awarded Sir John Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales

Public collections

Durrant's work is held in the following public collections:

The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra National Gallery of Victoria The Art Gallery of South Australia The Art Gallery of Western Australian Queensland University Rockhampton Art Gallery, Queensland Shepparton Art Museum, Victoria Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria Caulfield Arts Complex, Victoria Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria The Art Gallery of Ballarat Hamilton Art Gallery, Victoria Bendigo Gallery, Victoria Horsham Art Gallery, Victoria ICI Corporate Collection NAB Collection British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria

Other work Films

1975 - Mad Dog Morgan, Special effects 1976 - Chopping Block: 16mm, pigeon dinner event, MOMA & White Street Theatre, New York 1977 - Long Weekend, Special effects; -Red Dog, 16mm, Alpine Dingoes 1980 - Self Portrait Blood Red, Meat Landscape, Awarded Best Experimental Film, Australian Film Institute Awards 1983 - Horse, 16mm, surreal dream

Autobiography The Insiders - A reflection of childhood days spent at orphanages and farm stays. All characters created by Ivan Durrant : Published by Bent Records, Copyright 1995, Benalla, Vic.

Australia Felix Arts Festival, Benalla, 1995 To date, the festival remains the largest coming together of artists, poets, and writers in Australia. The festival was a two-week-long event, with 120 exhibiting and visiting artists; and 40 performing poets.

Essentials Magazine Ivan Durrant is a regular contributor to Essentials Magazine, a Victorian High Country magazine dedicated to culture, culinary and adventure content.

Publications Year of Publication Author and Publication Details 1976 Quadrant, Front Cover. 1976 McNeil, David, 'The Dead Hand of Art', Arts Melbourne Vol. 1, No. 2, June 1976. 1979 Linsday, Robert, Survey 8 Catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria. 1981 Phipps, Jennifer, 'Recent Artists: Film in Australia', Flash Art Milan, No. 101, Jan/Feb edn. 1982 Australian Independent Film, Australian Film Commission, November. 1982 A History of Australian Art, Educational material (slides) 1989 Thomas, Daniel, Outlines of Australian Art: The Joseph Brown Collection, 3rd edn, Macmillan, South Melbourne. 1994 Eagle, Mary and Jones, John, A Story of Australian Painting, Macmillan, Sydney. Notes on Back Cover: "A history based on the ...ICI Australia collection" 1996 Mancini, Anne, Australian Perspectives on Art: An issues based approach, Addison Wesley Longman Australia, Melbourne. 1997 Aland, Jenny and Darby, Max, Australian artLook, Rigby Heinemann, Port Melbourne. 1998 Chamberlin, Lou, Art Smart, McGraw-Hill, Sydney. 2000 Murray Cree, Laura and Drury, Nevill (eds), Australian painting now, Craftsman House, North Ryde. 2004 Morrison, Kirsty (ed), Eat Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2004 Thomas, Daniel - 'Fleshly moralities: Ivan Durrant in Melbourne', Art Monthly Issue 172, August. 2011 Durrant, Jacqui, 'Public understandings and private metaphor in Ivan Durrant's 'the cow', Art and Australia, Vol. 48/3. 2011 McCullough, Tom, 'Landscapes and Horses: Ivan Durrant', Artlink, Vol 31, No. 2.

Personal life Resides in Blairgowrie, Victoria Married to Judy Durrant Children: Jacqui Durrant; Jamie Durrant

Breeds and races pigeons. Breeds cattle. Worked in an abattoir to put himself through matriculation. In 1969, Durrant became the first Victorian ward of the state to gain a bachelor's degree (Monash, BEc).

Related artists and associations In the mid 1970s: Durrant exhibited in New York with the American Realists Chuck Close, and Janet Fish.