Geoff Todd (born 1950 in Chelsea, Victoria) is an Australian artist and social commentator and has a contemporary figurative style in drawing, painting and sculpture. Geoff Todd works between studios in Winnellie, NT, and Ararat, Victoria.
Early life and education
Geoff Todd grew up on a small dairy farm in Gippsland, Victoria.[1][2]
Geoff Todd worked as an art teacher in several Victorian State Technical schools during the 1970s and 1980s. While teaching at Monterey Secondary College in 1980, he took a half-year residency at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne before heading to Maningrida in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia in 1984, where he served as a craft adviser.[3] Following his departure from Maningrida in 1987, Todd worked as an Art Lecturer at Batchelor Institute in Rum Jungle, Northern Territory, before becoming a part-time Sculpture Lecturer at Charles Darwin University, also in the Northern Territory.
Exhibitions
Todd began his career as an artist in the mid-1970s. He gained recognition for his "Book Sculptures," which were first exhibited at Powell Street Gallery in Melbourne in 1978 and later showcased in Australia and the UK. In 1984, he presented an exhibition of "Dictionary Paintings" at Christine Abraham's Gallery, incorporating silk screen, etching, wood block prints, and collage to reproduce well-known magazines, children's storybooks, and an illustrated dictionary.[4]
Throughout his career, Todd has executed public commissions, including the facades of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory and the Northern Territory Parliament House in 1994.[5][6] His artistic contributions have extended to Indonesia, where his work is held in various museums' permanent collections in different cities. Some of his pieces have been acquired by the Northern Territory Museums and Art Galleries' permanent collection.[7][8]
In 1999, Todd held an exhibition at Benteng Vredeberg (The Dutch Fort) in Yogyakarta, Java, which was inaugurated by Prince Prabukusomo, the younger brother of the current Sultan Hamengkubuwono X of Yogyakarta. This exhibition garnered positive responses, establishing Todd as a respected artist both in Indonesia and Australia."[9]
His figurative work reveals intimate, personal and sometimes erotic connections with his subjects, while pursuing broader themes.
"In a career spanning over forty years Geoff Todd's practice has consistently expressed his commitment to social justice and activism, while also reflecting his responses to wider political issues ranging from the so-called 'Bali Nine' arrests in 2005, to September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.[10] Figurative art led Todd to translate three-dimensional form into two-dimensional drawing and painting. About his portrait of Judas Iscariot, the American author Susan Gubar writes "Todd's image emphasizes guilt, remorse, a conviction about one's own worthlessness. Less a demon, more a monk or mendicant, a hopeless Judas atoning in desolate silence clarifies how it feels to be John's son of perdition, an anathema."[11][12] in 2017, The Darwin gallery, Framed, featured Todd's work for their closing exhibition after thirty years . The solo show along with the book, "Reflections" revealed thirty years of the artist's work and his thought processes.[13][14]
The River Man, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982. [designer] ISBN0195543831
Lindsey, Tim & Pausacker, Helen (Eds) Religion, Law and Intolerance in Indonesia, Routledge, Oxford, 2016 ISBN9781138100879
Lindsey Tim & Nicholson, Penelope, Drugs Law and Legal Practice in South East Asia: Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam, Hart Publishing, Oxford 2015 ISBN9781782258315
Christies, Australian, International & Contemporary Paintings, Christies Australia, South Yarra, 2005, p. 172
Germaine, Max, Artists and Galleries of Australia, Third Edition (Revised and enlarged), Craftsman House, Roseville, (1984) 1990, Vol. 2, p. 677 -78. ISBN9768097027
Gubar, Susan, Juda: A Biography, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 2009, p. 252, 254-55. ISBN0393064832
Healy, Jacqueline, " Geoff Todd: War Heroes, Portraits of Victoria Cross Winners & A Protest in Blood", Bundoora Homestead Gallery, Bundoora, 2001
Levitt, Stewart A, & Todd, Geoff D, (with Carmon, Odelia & Overby II, Rodney) Psalms For The Secular: A Collaboration Between Stewart Levitt and Geoff Todd,
McCulloch, Alan, McCulloch, Susan & McCulloch Childs, Emily (Eds) The New McCulloch's Encyclopaedia of Australian Art, Australian Art Editions/The Miegunyah Press, Fourth Edition, (1968) 2006, p,957 http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/9035129
Mendham, Dawn & West, Margie, Contemporary Territory, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, 1994, p. 52-55. Contemporary Territory (MAGNT) 1994
Murray, Daena, The Sound Of The Sky, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory/Charles Darwin University Press, 2006, p. 135-36, 145,150 "The Sound Of The Sky: The Northern Territory in Australian Art", Museum & Art Gallery The Sound Of The Sky (MAGNT)/Charles Darwin University Press 2006
Office of the Administrator Northern Territory, 1999, Northern Territory Chronicle 1974-1998, ISBN1876248238