Neil Haddon

It's Difficult (this Tasmanian landscape)

2023
oil, acrylic and lacquer on aluminium panel
140 x 130cm
Courtesy of the artist

Artist bio

Neil Haddon is a British Australian artist. Before emigrating to Hobart, Haddon lived in Barcelona, Spain. His paintings explore how a migratory way of working can be applied to creative practice. Haddon's paintings have been included in over 100 exhibitions in Australia, Europe, the USA. These include 'Theatre of the World', curated by Jean-Hubert Martin at MONA, Tasmania and La Maison Rouge, Paris, 'Strange Trees' at The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG), and 'Contemporary Encounters', at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne. His work is held in significant national and international collections, including The NGV and TMAG.

Artist statement

'It's Difficult (this Tasmanian landscape) features dislocated imagery that merges past and present time. It compounds memories, associations, and representations formed elsewhere with those of the place where I live now. The transitory, unfixed imagery reflects my experience of migration and how it intertwines with the fraught histories of lutruwita/Tasmania. The painting includes fragments of landscape paintings by Paul Gauguin and Gustave Dore that serve as meaningful waymarkers of my migratory journey from the United Kingdom via Spain to lutruwita. In essence, It's Difficult is a migrant's view of a place out of place; a landscape of continual arrival.'

@njhaddon

This artwork will be on display in the 2023 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize Finalist Exhibition from Saturday 25 November 2023 until Sunday 18 February 2024.

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