Marion Borgelt
Marion Borgelt (born 1954) is a contemporary Australian artist based in Sydney. Borgelt originally trained as a painter and now her practice encompasses painting, installation, sculpture and mixed media. With a career spanning over 40 years, she has held more than 50 solo exhibitions and participated in over 180 group shows globally. Borgelt's work is currently held in public collections including the National Gallery of Australia and Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, and in international museums such as Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA and New Zealand's Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Borgelt has been awarded global commissions including by Baker McKenzie for their Sydney offices in Barangaroo and AMP Capital at 123 Pitt Street, Sydney, and by Melco Crown Resorts, Macau, for their Morpheus (hotel) design by Zaha Hadid Architects. Her work is held in private collections across the United States of America, France, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Dubai, Morocco, United Kingdom, Germany, Myanmar, China and Mexico. Borgelt is the recipient of international art awards and residencies including a French Government Art Fellowship and Residency (1989) and the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2020). Borgelt has won the Peter Brown Memorial Travelling Art Scholarship, the Dyson Bequest for work and research in Paris and an Australia Council Creative Arts Fellowship. In 1996 she became the first Australian to win the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. Early life Borgelt was raised on a farm near Nhill, in the Wimmera district of Victoria. Between 1973 and 1976 she undertook a Diploma of Fine Art at the South Australian School of Arts before completing a Graduate Diploma of Secondary Art Teaching at Torrens University Australia in Adelaide in 1977. Borgelt left Australia for the New York Studio School in 1979. In the 1980s, Borgelt taught at the Canberra School of Art and the UNSW School of Art & Design. She was a guest lecturer at University of Newcastle, Macquarie University, Campbelltown City Bicentennial Arts Centre and the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at the University of New South Wales. Artistic practice Interested in the cosmos, language and phenomenology, Borgelt has discussed maths, science and physics as paths to better understanding the universe and explores these disciplines in her art. Her investigation of these influences through diverse mediums, has led to collaborations with René Tazé etching atelier in Paris (1990), with printer Fred Genis (1995), with Fondazione Berengo Studio in Murano, Italy (2006-2007) and with Tilt Mechanical Engineers (2020-2021). Career 1980s The natural landscape that surrounded Borgelt during her rural upbringing inspired her early work. Anna Voigt wrote concerning Borgelt's art practice that, "The journey of the spirit and of artmaking are inseparable realities for Marion Borgelt". Borgelt's childhood in rural Australia remains integral to her art practice. As for the landscape itself, she "was always both impressed and haunted by the vast flat open space of the Wimmera. In summer it felt like we lived under the sun. It was hot and dusty, wheat fields shimmering as far as the eye