international institutions, including the National Museum of Australia Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the Queensland Art Gallery. In 2005-2006 he was Research Professor at The National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan. He is currently an independent curator of contemporary Indigenous art.

 

Between 1979 and 1995 he was the Art Advisor at Ramingining in the Northern Territory, where his close mentorship and support of the great artists of the 1970s enabled the collection and acquisition of bark paintings by the Power Institute, University of Sydney in 1985, and in 1988 the making of a most significant Australian Indigenous art installation at the National Gallery of Australia. This Aboriginal Memorial group of 200 painted wooden poles was conceived and developed with Djon’s encouragement and was made by many of Central Arnhem Land’s key artists.In 1994 he co-curated (with Fiona Foley) ‘Tyerabowbarwarryaou — I Shall never Become a Whiteman’-Contemporary Aboriginal Art , and was a curator for ‘Aratjara’ exhibition (Dusseldorf, London, and Denmark, 1993–94). Other major exhibitions include ‘They are Meditating: Bark Paintings from the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Arnott’s Collection’ (2008) and ‘The Native Born (1996, MCA). Recent exhibitions include the highly regarded Bungaree: The First Australian, an exhibition and catalogue of commissioned artworks by sixteen NSW Aboriginal artists,toured by Mosman Art Gallery (2015–16).

 

In 1993, he received the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the promotion and development of Aboriginal arts, crafts and culture.

concerned with place, locality and evocations of the landscape.

 

His work is about “belonging” and “not belonging” – about relationships between a “fatherland” and its diaspora. Much of the contemporary world, at least what is called “the new world” is populated by the descendants of refugees and immigrants, most notably Australia. He has also been a pivotal figure in the discussions raging about appropriation and Aboriginal dislocation having referenced their temporal and spiritual journeys in his work from the 1980s to the present day dialogue.

 

Imants has exhibited widely since the late 1960s, and has represented Australia at important international exhibitions, such as the São Paulo Bienal in 1975, Documenta 7 in 1982, and the 42nd Venice Biennale in 1986. Tillers will present a major solo exhibition titled Journey to Nowhere at the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia in 2018.

 

Major solo surveys of Tillers’ work include Meeting Place: Imants Tillers and Michael Nelson Jagamarra, Parliament House, Canberra (2017); Dreamings: Australian Aboriginal Art meets De Chirico, Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome (2014); The Long Poem, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, Perth (2009)

 

Regarded as one of Australia’s greatest artists, he in turn explores the greatness of Australia’s indigenous artists including Clifford Possum and Michael Nelson Jagamara in a telling and historic interplay between cultures, advancing towards each other. The shimmering veils of pattern and imagery celebrate these ‘mephistos’ of Australian art from the desert.

 

Imants served as a trustee on the Board of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney from 2001-2009.

 

In 2005, the University of New South Wales awarded a Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa to Imants Tillers for his long and distinguished contribution to the field of arts.

to undertake research in Jingdezhen, China, the home of porcelain, which transformed his practice. Since then he has won the inaugural Australian National Sculpture Prize, National Gallery of Australia (2001), the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, National Gallery of Victoria (2009) and received an Australia Council Fellowship (2002-2004).

 

He has held retrospective exhibitions at Hamilton Gallery, Victoria (2016) and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (2003) and numerous solo exhibitions at prestigious art museums in Australia and internationally. His works have been acquired for important state, national and private collections in Australia, North America, East Asia and Europe. In 2004, he was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to create a porcelain bust of paediatrician and 1996 Australian of the Year Dr John Yu, his only portrait commission.