Richard Lewer

Hamilton-born artist Richard Lewer works and lives in Melbourne, Australia. In 1992 Richard earned his Bachelor of Fine Art from Elam School of Fine Art, Auckland University, and in 2000, his Master of Visual Arts from Victoria College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Among the few trans-Tasman artists with a significant practice in New Zealand as well as Australia, Richard exhibits regularly, has taken up residencies and received numerous awards in both countries.  

Working across a range of mediums, his art explores the intimate, though at times uncomfortable, terrain of his own personal history, as well as the history of his adopted country Australia. His works speak to what is familiar and relatable about human connection and experience, resonating in their portrayal of family, friends, sport mates, childhood scenes and recent family developments.

At once simplified and stylised, figures and settings convey their own narratives with compassion and humour that are distinctly his own. Lewer describes himself as a social realist - though with a contemporary idiolect - and explores the idiosyncratic, marginal tales of unlikely real-life. His stripped-back, candid depictions lay bare, without artifice, what is beautiful and sinister about society, without the hindrance of a moralising or politicising tone.

Richard is the recipient of many awards and prizes. In 2020, he was selected among nine artists commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales to create a major new work for the art museum campus as part of the largest commissioning program since the public institution opened 150 years ago.

At the recent NGV Triennial in Melbourne in 2023-2024, Richard had two series of work exhibited including his Adam and Eve series which is now a proposed acquisition for the NGV collection.  His most recent institutional exhibition was shown at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Wellington between February – May 2024.  ‘What they didn’t teach me at school’  is a body of work resulting from his own personal journey learning about the Waikato Wars where he sought to understand the history of the place he comes from and his place within as a result of that history.

Quotation from Victoria Hynes' Artist Review.