Jon Cattapan

Jon Cattapan (born 1956) is an Australian visual artist best known for his abstract oil paintings of cityscapes, his service as the 63rd Australian war artist and his work as a professor of visual art at the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the Victorian College of the Arts. Cattapan's artworks are held in several major galleries and collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Australia.

Early life and education

Childhood and early adulthood Jon Cattapan was born in 1956 in Melbourne Cattapan's family emigrated from Castelfranco in the Veneto region of Italy after World War II.

Career

Early career (1977–1989) Cattapan had his first group exhibition Crisis Drawings in 1978 with artist Peter Ellis at the RMIT faculty gallery having a residencies at the Australia Council's Greene Street studio in Manhattan In the corresponding exhibition catalogue Cattapan's artworks are described; "brief moments in a modern metropolis are captured in small detail only to be displaced amongst a melange of information... there is constant movement across the boundaries of figuration and abstraction".

Service as the 63rd Australian war artist (2008) In 2008, Cattapan served as Australia's 63rd war artist, being deployed to Timor-Leste on a peacekeeping mission with the Australian Army. Cattapan has described his title as a war artist as overly dramatic given the relative stability of Timor-Leste however has also stated that he feels privileged to have been a war artist and that "the experience opened up a very rich and meaningful artistic journey for me".

Post Timor-Leste (2008–present) Cattapan was the recipient of the Bulgari Art Award in 2013.

Still influenced by his time as a war artist, Cattapan collaborated with fellow war artists Charles Green and Lyndell Brown on collaborative shows such as Spook Country. Dan Rule of The Age described these collaborations overall as discussing and resonating with the repercussions of conflict, especially the notion of accountability in relation to conflict occurring overseas. As part of the project a Melbourne tram was wrapped in an artistic design of Cattapan's. Aitken stated that Cattapan had "become something of a mentor" and that the two artists have a "unique relationship" given their difference in tertiary education.

he exhibits with Station Gallery in Melbourne, Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney

Career as an academic Cattapan started his academic career as a lecturer in painting, drawing and printmaking at his Alma mater, RMIT, in 1982, before becoming a lecturer in painting in 1987 and leaving the university in 1989. Between 1992 and 1994 Cattapan was lecturer in foundation studies at the Australian National University before becoming a senior lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts. Cattapan also previously held the position of director at the Victorian College of the Arts. Cattapan elaborated that he interpreted a strong sense of instability in The Drowned World stating that in the book "everything is on the verge of sliding away". and he has been noted for his interest in the post-modern city. Artist and critic John Conomos is quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying "His swirling atmospherics suggest the romanticism of Turner's landscapes and Whistler's nocturnes".

Several of Cattapan's notable city-scape works are held in the collections of major Australian galleries including Possible Histories which is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia and The Melbourne Panels, held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria

War art and night vision During his deployment as the 63rd Australian war artist, Cattapan began to experiment with night-vision equipment. In his words:Using an amalgam of local and global environments to test ways of picturing gatherings or mapping territories has been at the heart of my practice. In Timor-Leste, that was brought to bear through the lens of the night-vision monocle I was given. The use of night-vision equipment was a continuation of Cattapan's previous interest in the nocturnal and in the use of digital technologies in his work process. Cattapan's work during and after his deployment conveyed notions of surrealism and voyeurism.

Post-war art style In 2014, art critic Sasha Grishin described Cattapan's work as "accessible, but simultaneously also mysterious and hinting at a different level of existence". Grishin has also noted Cattapan's interest in information systems and surveillance technology. Eyeline magazine interpreted this as a reaction to the instability of the 21st century and offered multiple different suggestions of the purpose and meaning of this change in technique. 2013: Bulgari Art Award

Major collections Cattapan's work is held in a large number of public collections, including: National Gallery of Victoria Art Gallery of New South Wales Queensland Art Gallery National Gallery of Australia Parliament House, Canberra Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Heide Museum of Modern Art