Marion Borgelt

Biography

Marion Borgelt, born in 1954 in Nhill, Victoria, is a leading Australian artist with a prodigious career spanning some 30 years. Her works draw inspiration from subjects such as semiotics, language, opticsa and phenomenology to create atavistic fantasies and mysteries in the forms of painting, sculpture and installation. In 1996, Borgelt was the first Australian artist awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Art Fellowship and in 2001–03 she was the recipient of a two-year Australia Council Fellowship.

Her works suggest connections between culture and nature, between the constructed world and the organic world, between microcosm and macrocosm and the duality of light and dark. A lexicon of symbols and motifs, at once universal and personal, distinguishes the imagery of Borgelt’s work. Drawing on experience with a wide range of materials, including bees-wax, canvas, felt, pigment, stainless steel, wood, stone and organic matter, she hones her ideas to the demands of a given site, mediating the creative intervention with originality and sensitivity. 

Borgelt has undertaken a number of large public and corporate commissions, including a site-specific work for Crown Towers at City of Dreams in Macau and a commemorative sculptural installation for the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, entitled Man’s Destiny Resides in the Sole(2005). Borgelt also created Round Up (2005), a site-specific, interactive maze for Shear Outback, Hay, in collaboration with Andrew Crick; Time and Tide (wait for no man), 2004, for J P Morgan Chase, Sydney; Pulse (2001), commissioned by the Australian National University, Canberra, in collaboration with Catherine Donnelley; 55 Ring Maze (2000), at Arthur’s seat, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria and Primordial Alphabet and Rhythm (1999) – a monumental work for News Limited, Sydney. 

Marion Borgelt has exhibited extensively in major national and international survey exhibitions, and is represented in important art collections in Australia and overseas. 

Article

“Modern art has been moving towards a consciousness of its profound role, the reawakening of the unity of mind and matter”   -     Onslow Ford Painting in The Instant 1964

Travelling deep below the threshold of normal consciousness, Marion Borgelt distils mindscapes that exquisitely express the energies of form and power that underpin existence. Drawing upon instinct, intuition and the natural world, she creates imagery which is aesthetically honed for reassurance, offering the viewer an image of healing, personal inspiration, mediation and regeneration.  Philosophically challenging, it is work that operates on many levels to explore the compelling relationship between mind and matter. 

An essential aspect of Borgelt’s work has been the use of forms as metaphor, a vocabulary of signs and symbols that evoke associations with historical, scientific, psychological and cultural meaning. In recent years she has worked on major commissions variously using sandstone, marble, stainless steel, fibreglass, concrete, wood, wax, resin and paint - whatever medium serves to define her own ideas needs and emotions. These works include the memorable 1.5 hectare cornfield maze in Victoria (1999-2000) grown specifically to Borgelt’s carefully planned labyrinthine design; an iconic masterpiece: the five-storey wall installation for the foyer of News Ltd Sydney (1998-9) on the subject of communication and its symbols; Pulse (2001), an exquisite jewel-like sculpture in stainless steel for the external wall of the Gravitational Wave Building at The Australian National University Canberra; Time and Tide (wait for no man) (2004), a stunning corporate piece in sandstone and stainless steel inspired by phases of the moon, commissioned by J P Morgan Chase for a balcony overlooking Sydney Harbour.

Marion Borgelt studied at the South Australian School of Art and Underdale CAE in Adelaide. 
On graduating she was awarded the prestigious Peter Brown Memorial Travelling Scholarship from the New York School, so travelled to New York to undertake post graduate studies for 18 months (1979-80). In 1986 she travelled to India representing Australia at the Indian Triennale of Art and in 1989, received an art fellowship and residency from the French Government to live and work in Paris where she stayed for eight years.  Since then Sydney has been her home. She was the first Australian   recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in the nineties. In 2001 she received a 2 year Fellowship from the Australia Council, Australia’s most prestigious art award.  Her work is included in many major public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, most state galleries, Parliament House and Artbank, as well as galleries in Europe and the US. 

Since graduating from art school in South Australia, Borgelt has chosen to work in an abstract, biomorphic style. Rejecting the figurative, she felt that abstraction offered her the best way to pursue her ideas.

It was during her period at the New York School in the late seventies that her interest in locating an object in space began to emerge. As a post graduate student she would do life drawing classes all day, then go to her studio at night to pursue her abstract investigations. In the evening she also attended the amazing lecture program of Christo, John Cage, Leo Steinberg and Dore Ashton, amongst others.  Returning to the figurative from abstraction at this time in her career was a major turning point that caused her attention to focus on issues associated with positioning a form in space. This subsequently led to a more conceptual and minimalist approach to her work. ‘’Working creatively every day, I realised that art had to be full-time pursuit and its value and meaning for me could only be realised through a dedicated practice.”

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Borgelt’s current works explore the human perceptual process and the way we view and see things as well as investigating the boundaries of form and what happens at its edge. The current exhibition comprises quite magical large-scale wall mounted sculptural installations along with  several other smaller scale groups of work. Their effect is high impact, with energy that flows over you like the clear waters of a pristine mountain stream. Importantly there is a move to painting in white instead of black. Symbolically speaking the void, the spiritual or infinite space from which form is generated has been transmuted from black to white, symbolically representing, in this context, the emergence of light and clarity as a focus for Borgelt’s work. 

Works vary from large images of circular planetary form as in Lune Lumina Suite (2004), or seductive white moon-shaped dish sculptures gently twisted with rounded arms extended for open embrace Lunar Warp Series (2004), to precious tablets covered in wax Ocular Botanical Suite (2004). These are presented as aesthetically beautiful photographic images of the iris of the eye and miniature biological forms. The latter are all in close focus and mounted like specimens and covered with wax. As a suite of images they reflect on the process of perception the power of the eye to record reality in the natural world.  Another suite of works A Cryptologists Memoir (2004),  is a series of books, securely preserved in resin packaging. Like gifts from some ancient library they are individually marked by large symbols which like stencils, have been cut deep through the pages into the body of the book. The symbols are an amalgam of Chinese, Cyrillic, Cuneiform, Greek, Roman, Old English and Roman alphabetical form, used to remind us of their importance, like books, as vehicles of communication.

In Liquid Light (2004) series the artist recalls the experiments in optical illusion of the 1960s Op Art movement. Her images transform as our viewing position to them changes with unexpected optical effects that are both dazzling and mesmerising. She creates her impact by standing white twisting ribbons of cut canvas at a 90 degree angle to the white painted surface of the painting. These painted strips act like shades such that the colour of the exposed surface on the flat picture plane below when viewed front on appears oval, but as you move slowly to the edges of the work, the shape of the oval becomes smaller. This generates an illusion of a rippling wave.  On one level they are metaphors for TV screen viewing and provide Borgelt with a vehicle to comment on the passive way screen information is acquired today. Her works celebrate a perceptual process where interactivity is demanded, and exemplify the fun that is there if we engage in a more meaningful way with our information. These works further extend her investigation into what happens at the edge of the form. Marion Borgelt creates uncertainty by dematerialising boundaries, this time without employing a painted chiaroscuro effect but instead three dimensional painted surfaces which generate optical illusions. By invoking the mysterious, metaphorically speaking, she invites us to approach our inner worlds where the subjective realities of mind and matter find their ultimate regeneration and expression.

- by Marie Geissler

Exhibition

2012: "Musical Geometry", Turner Galleries

2011: "Heartbeat", Dominik Mersch Gallery

2010: "MIND & MATTER, A 15 Year Survey", Drill Hall Gallery, The Australian National University

2009: "Exotic Particles", Turner Galleries

2008: "Venetian Tsukimi", Sherman Galleries, Sydney, Australia

Awards

1977: Gill Memorial Medal as Most Outstanding final year student, South Australian School of Art

1979: Peter Brown Memorial Traveling Art Scholarship (New York)

1989: Fellowship from France

1996: Pollock - Krasner Art Fellowship

2001-03: Australia Council Fellowship