Celebrated for his extraordinary mastery of technique, Michael Zavros has long astounded audiences with his resplendent realist works. Zavros’s imbues each work with a potent symbolism, meditating on themes of luxury, the idealised self, overconsumption and aspirational beauty. The artist explores these themes through still life drawing and painting, photography, sculpture and video.
Selected Works
Overview
Oil on aluminium
40 × 30cm
oil on board
40 × 35 cm
oil on board
35.5 × 28 cm
oil on board
60 × 40 cm
oil on canvas
110 × 150 cm copy
oil on canvas
200 × 200 cm
oil on board
40.5 × 31.5 cm
oil on canvas
131 × 176 cm
oil on aluminium
30 × 20 cm
Oil on canvas
160 × 205 cm
oil on canvas
100 × 150 cm
oil on canvas
170 × 115 cm
oil on canvas
210 × 170 × 3.5 cm
lightjet print
172.7 × 122 cm
Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs
lightjet print
172.7 × 122 cm
Exhibitions
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About
Michael Zavros
Biography
Celebrated for his extraordinary mastery of technique, Michael Zavros has long astounded audiences with his resplendent realist works. Zavros’s imbues each work with a potent symbolism, meditating on themes of luxury, the idealised self, overconsumption and aspirational beauty. The artist explores these themes through still life drawing and painting, photography, sculpture and video.
In 2012 Michael Zavros was awarded the inaugural Bulgari Art Award through the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2010 he was awarded the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, the world’s richest prize for portraiture. He has won three major Australian drawing prizes: the 2002 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, the 2005 Robert Jacks Drawing Prize and the 2007 Kedumba Drawing Award, and has been a multiple Archibald Prize finalist. He was the recipient of the 2004 MCA Primavera Collex Art Award.
In 2016 Zavros showed a solo exhibition at Art Los Angeles Contemporary and in 2015 a solo at Art Basel Hong Kong. Other shows include Selectively Revealed, an Asialink and Experimenta Media Arts exhibition that toured to Korea, Indonesia and Thailand in 2012, New Nature at Govett Brewster Gallery, New Zealand in 2007 and Uncanny (the unnaturally strange), Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand.
Zavros’s selected Australian group exhibitions include Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2016 at Art Gallery of South Australia, GOMAQ at Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2015, Wilderness at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2010, Scott Redford Vs Michael Zavros at the Institute of Modern Art, 2010, Contemporary Australia: Optimism at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2008, and Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2000.
Solo exhibitions include Bad Dad at Starkwhite, Auckland, 2014, A Private Collection: Artist Choice, Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, The Prince, Rockhampton Art Gallery and Griffith University Art Gallery, The Good Son: Works on Paper, a survey exhibition in 2009 at Gold Coast City Art Gallery and Everything I wanted at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane in 2003/2004.
Zavros has been the recipient of several international residencies including the Australia Council Greene Street Studio, New York, 2014 Milan studio residency in 2001, and the Barcelona studio in both 2005 and 2010. In 2003 he was awarded a Cite International des Arts Residency in Paris through the Power Institute, University of Sydney. In 2004 he was awarded a studio residency at the Gunnery Studios, Sydney, from the NSW Ministry for the Arts.
In 2013 he was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial to paint a portrait of Victoria Cross winner Ben Roberts-Smith and in 2016 he will paint Dame Quentin Bryce for the National Portrait Gallery. He served on the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts between 2007 and 2011 and currently serves on the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) board.
His work is held in numerous private and public collections, including The National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, University of Queensland Art Museum, Artbank, National Portrait Gallery, Griffith University Art Collection, Newcastle Region Art Gallery and Tasmanian Museum and Gallery.
Sullivan+Strumpf acknowledge the Indigenous People of this land, the traditional custodians on whose Country we work, live and learn. We pay respect to Elders, past and present, and recognise their continued connection to culture, land, waters and community.