Ian NORTH

Professor Ian North AM was a well-respected Adelaide-based artist, arts writer, curator and academic. Working in painting and photography his practice considered identity, place and post-conceptual authenticity. His work has been exhibited throughout Australia as a solo artist, and in group exhibitions in Asia, the United Kingdom, and United States of America. His artwork is held in fifteen public collections around Australia including Adelaide Festival Centre, Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank, National Gallery of Victoria and National Gallery of Australia. North is represented by GAGPROJECTS, formerly known as Greenaway Art Gallery.

Born in 1945 in Aotearoa, New Zealand, from 1969-71 North was Director at Te Manawa, formerly Manawatu Art Gallery. He immigrated to Australia in 1971, where he was appointed Curator of Paintings at the Art Gallery of South Australia until 1980. During which time, he also completed a Master of Arts (Art History) at Flinders University in 1977. He then moved to Canberra as the newly appointed Foundation Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia (1980-84). He then continued his arts education in studio-based research where he received a Master of Arts majoring in photography at the University of New Mexico in 1986, then a Master of Fine Art in 1989. He returned to Adelaide to take up the leadership position as Head of the South Australian School of Art until 1992. He then became Professor of Visual Arts and from 2007 was an Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts at the University of South Australia.

North has been an incredibly influential figure in shaping the arts landscape in South Australia. He helped establish the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art and return the South Australian School of Art to a city-based campus. He was also credited with realising the prestigious Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships program. He was a co-founder of the Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, in 1974, now known as Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE). When President of the Art Association of Australia in 1997-99, he rewrote its constitution to include New Zealand, creating the Art Association of Australia & New Zealand (AAANZ). In 2014, he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (AM) and a Doctor of Arts honoris causa from the University of Adelaide.