ABOUT

Jeremy Bakker is a Melbourne-based artist who works across drawing, installation, sculpture, photography and video. His practice most often contrasts the widely shared desire for continuity and permanency with the more unstable nature of human experience: how apparently fixed forms are constantly reconfigured; how connections are often fleeting, and actions transient. Utilising a range of media and processes – including durational drawings that embed time in the accumulation of marks on paper, familiar objects that have been transfigured through different material states, and ephemeral site-specific installations – Bakker's work engages with ideas of time and presence as understood through a bodily engagement with the physical world.

The dislocation of travel – of being an outsider in new locales and cultural spaces – has often granted Bakker a productive ground against which to consider these themes. To this end, he has since 2012 regularly undertaken international artist residencies, including the Echigo-Tsumari Australia House Artist Residency, Niigata Prefecture, Japan (2012); DCR studios, The Hague, Netherlands (2016); AIR Krems, for RMIT Situate Austrian Art Residency exchange, Krems, Austria (2017); and the Courthouse Gallery and Studios residency program, Ennistymon, Ireland (2019). Recent solo projects have been presented as direct outcomes of extended residency periods, and include These Fleeting Few, Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, Japan (2012); With Holding, Kunstverein Baden, Baden, Austria (2017); and, Erratics, Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Ireland (2019).

Bakker’s most recent works have turned attention towards digital media technologies, and consider how screen-based representations of nature and time might engender both intimacy and distance.

Solo Exhibitions:

2019 Erratics, Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Ireland
2018 Unfathoming, BLINDSIDE, Melbourne
2017 With Holding, Kunstverein Baden, Baden, Austria
2013 Borrowed Time, for 'The Quiet Addition', Liquid Architecture, Spare Room, RMIT University, Melbourne
2012 These Fleeting Few, Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, Japan
2012 Minor Infinities, CONICAL, Melbourne
2010 i is another, Light Projects, Melbourne
2009 Resonate, West Space, Melbourne
2009 Alone Together, School of Art Gallery, RMIT University, Melbourne
2008 Cluster, Bus Gallery, Melbourne

Collaborative Project:

2012 The Space Between Our Hands, with Ross Coulter, for the Echigo-Tsumari Snow Art Festival, Niigata Prefecture, Japan

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2022 The Brain in Art and Science, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany
2021 TarraWarra Bienial 2021 : Slow Moving Waters, TarraWarra, Australia
2019 Fly Me To The Moon, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria
2018 Significant Velocities, Project Space, RMIT University, Melbourne
2015 (lt) x IDES, Two by Two, Melbourne
2014 Making Space, Foolscape Studios, Melbourne
2013 Pattern, Glen Eira City Council Gallery, Melbourne
2013 Complex Matter, Beam Contemporary, Melbourne
2012 Innovators 3, Linden Contemporary, Melbourne
2012 Ode to Form, West Space, Melbourne
2011 Immanent Landscape, Kurumaya Museum, Oyama, Japan
2010 Immanent Landscape, West Space, Melbourne, Australia
2010 Constellations, RMIT Gallery, RMIT University, Melbourne
2008 Wigga, Shifted Gallery Melbourne
2007 Art and Text, Podspace Gallery, This Is Not Art (TINA) Newcastle, NSW
2007 B & B, Gallery 124, Armidale, New South Wales
2005 Thai-Australian Contemporary Prints, 2005, Chiangmai University Art Museum, Chiangmai, Thailand
2005 Imaging the Land, CoFA Exhibition and Performance Space, COFA, Sydney

Residencies:

2019 Courthouse Gallery and Studios residency program, Ennistymon, Ireland
2018 Bogong Centre for Sound Culture residency program, Bogong, Victoria
2017 AIR Krems, for RMIT Situate Austrian Art Residency exchange, Krems, Austria
2016 DCR studios, The Hague, Netherlands
2012 Echigo-Tsumari Australia House Artist Residency, Niigata Prefecture, Japan
2011 Youkoubo Art Space, Tokyo, Japan
2011 Kurumaya Museum of Art, Oyama, Japan

Awards/Grants:

2008 Siemens/RMIT Fine Art Award, RMIT University, Melbourne
2006 Jenny Birt Award, CoFA Exhibition Space, College of Fine Arts, Sydney

Publications/Reviews:

Borrowed Time, Eugenie Austin, Eyeline magazine, No. 81, 2014
Learning About "Snow" from Australian Artists, Fran Kitagawa, catalogue essay, The Space Between Our Hands, 2012
Disappearing Artworks and the Culture of Acceptance, Hiroki Sato, catalogue essay, The Space Between Our Hands, 2012
Here With You, runway magazine, Issue 22: SITE, 2012
A Warm Sun in the Heart of a Cold Place, Nicholas Croggan, catalogue essay, Ode To Form, Westspace, 2012
Minor Infinities, Dan Rule, The Age, June 2012
Minor Infinities, Sam Barnes, exhibition essay, Conical, 2012
Undiscovered, Mark Feary, Australian Art Collector, April-June, 2010
The Time of My Life, Phip Murray, exhibition essay, Resonate, Westspace, 2009
Alone Together, published by S. Barnes 2009
Silence is Golden, Francis Johnson, The Age, Friday, June 20, 2008

Public Collections:

RMIT University, Melbourne

Boards/Committees:

2010—2012 West Space Gallery Programming Committee, Melbourne