Table of Contents
Art Minute
| Title: | Amber Wallis - Melbourne Art Fair 2012 |
|---|---|
| Duration: | 6:00 |
| Year: | 2012 |
| DOP: | Peter M Lamont |
About Amber Wallis
Amber Wallis was born in New Zealand in 1978 and later moved to Australia, where she has become a prominent figure in contemporary painting. Her early life in a remote alternative community in New Zealand has profoundly influenced her artistic vision, infusing her work with themes of utopian ideals and personal history.
Wallis pursued formal art education at the Canberra School of Art, including an exchange program at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Canada. She completed her Master of Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne in 2008. That same year, she was awarded the prestigious Brett Whiteley Traveling Art Scholarship, which facilitated her artistic development through residencies in New York, Montreal, and Paris.
Since 2009, Wallis has held numerous solo exhibitions across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. Notable exhibitions include “Quiet Paintings” (2024), “Hidden Mothers and Ghost Flowers” (2023), and “The Heroine Paint” (2021), a collaborative project with artist Kylie Banyard at Lismore Regional Gallery. Her work has also been featured internationally in Los Angeles and London.
Wallis’s paintings are characterised by gestural brushstrokes and a delicate application of colour on both primed and raw linen. She often explores the intersection of domesticity and erotic fantasy, blurring the lines between interior spaces and landscapes. Her technique involves allowing paint to stain the canvas, creating abstracted surfaces that evoke a sense of ambiguity and mystery.
Throughout her career, Wallis has received significant recognition, including the inaugural Wollumbin Art Award at Tweed Regional Gallery in 2022. Her work has been featured in publications such as “Australian Abstract” by Amber Creswell-Bell and “Australiana to Zeitgeist: An A-Z of Contemporary Australian Art” by Melissa Loughnan. Her paintings are held in collections like Artbank and the Arthur Roe Collection, as well as various private collections both in Australia and internationally.
In recent years, Wallis’s work has been included in exhibitions such as “Arriving Slowly” at Ipswich Art Gallery (2024–2025) and “TENDER” at Ngununggula, Southern Highlands Regional Gallery (2025), showcasing her continued relevance and influence in the contemporary art scene.
References
1. Amber Wallis - Nicholas Thompson Gallery
2. About - Amber Wallis
3. Amber Wallis - Jan Murphy Gallery
4. Amber Wallis - Artist Profile
5. Amber Wallis - Geelong Gallery
