Marion Borgelt
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[edit] Biography
Marion Borgelt (b.1954) is a contemporary Australian artist based in Sydney. While originally trained as a painter, she also works in other media such as installation and mixed media. During the 1970s Borgelt gained art training at the South Australian School of Art (Adelaide), the Torrens College of Advanced Education (Adelaide) and at the New York Studio School (New York).
It the 1980s she taught art at various art institutions including Canberra School of Art (Canberra) and College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales (Sydney). Borgelt was also guest lecturer at the Newcastle University (Newcastle), Macquarie University (Sydney), Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery (Sydney) and Ivan Dougherty Gallery at the University of New South Wales (Sydney), to name a few. Several times she was recipient of prestigious Moet & Chandon Art Fellowship. In 1982 Borgelt participated at the famous Biennale of Sydney (Sydney) and three years later in Australian Perspecta (Sydney). Together with Jenny Watson, Borgelt co-represented Australia at the Sixth Indian Triennale (New Delhi). She had numerous radio and television interview appearances.
An extensive amount of material has been written about Borgelt’s work which appeared in national and international art journals including Artlink, Art International and Art and Australia. The authors of these are some well-known Australian art writers such as Anthony Bond, Anna Voigt, Nevill Drury, Victoria Lyn, Rod Pattenden, William Wright and Nadine Amadio. Borgelt’s work also features in major Australian art publications such as The Encyclopedia of Australian Art by Alan McCulloch and Susan McCulloch (Allen & Unwin: Sydney, 1994). Victoria Lynn wrote monograph Marion Borgelt in 1997 (Art and Australia monograph, Craftsman House: Sydney).
In 1989 Borgelt won French Government Artists Residency and moved to Paris the same year where she lived for the next nine years. During this period she resided in well-known Latin Quarter. While in Paris, Borgelt collaborated with Rene Taze etching atelier and later on with master printer Fred Genis in Sydney. It is in Paris where Borgelt created a large body of work related to the notion of primordial. Her visual explorations of this notion are reflected in the works such as Primordial Logic (1996) and Primordial One: Figures F, B, E, A (1997). In her work Anima/Animus: Splitting Into One No. III (1994), there is a reference to a Jungian theory of the archetypes. What is noticeable in these works is the presence of the circle shape. This shape often occurs in Borgelt’s oeuvre. While various shapes have different significance for Borgelt, the circle, as she states,“ […] embraces to me the most, and the oval too to a certain degree, but the circle seems to represent to me ‘totality.’ Because the circle is […] a contained thing without […] any tension.” (Marion Borgelt in “Interview with the artist Marion Borgelt” conducted by Katharine R. M. Buljan on 16 October 2002 (Sydney). Tape-recorder). Borgelt further reflects that, “[…] there is no tension inside the circle, there are no tension points.”(Ibid). The circle, as Borgelt notes is, “[…] without […] pivotal […] or balancing point. There is no top or bottom, nor side […]”(Ibid). Borgelt concludes that the circle is a, “[…] fully realised, perfect kind of shape.”(Ibid).
Borgelt’s French palette mainly features the blacks, the reds and the whites. Victoria Lynn notes an interesting point about Borgelt’s work when she writes that, “Energy in her paintings can be as soft as a feather or as turbulent as and fierce as a violent storm.” (Victoria Lynn, Marion Borgelt, Craftsman House: Roseville East, NSW, 1996, p. 8).
Borgelt regularly exhibits in Australia and overseas and has held numerous one-person exhibitions. She has also participated in a vast number of group exhibitions on national and international level and continues to do so. Since the early days of her artistic career Borgelt won numerous awards, fellowships and grants. These include Peter Brown Memorial Travelling Art Scholarship, French Government Art Fellowship and Residency, Dyson Bequest for work and research in Paris and Australia Council Creative Arts Fellowship. In addition, in 1996 Borgelt was the first Australian recipient of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award.
The work of this significant artist is included in numerous public and private art collections including Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), Parliament House Collection (Canberra), Powerhouse Museum (Sydney), University of Sydney (Sydney), Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (Mornington Peninsula), Bata Shoe Museum (Toronto), Limerick City Gallery (Limerick), Los Angeles County Museum (Los Angeles) and Auckland Museum of Contemporary Art (Auckland). Besides, the major corporate collections also hold Borgelt’s work such as Faber-Castell Collection, Janet Holmes a Court Collection, Australian Paper Corporate Collection (Melbourne), to name a few.
Borgelt has also been involved in numerous public commissions. These include a foyer installation Primordial Alphabet and Rhythm for News Limited in Sydney (1998-1999) and commemorative installation Man’s Destiny Resides in the Sole for Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto (2005). In the 2006 Borgelt had a productive collaboration with Adriano Berengo Glass (Murano, Italy).
The turn of a new millennium have also marked a change in Borgelt's palette. The reds that predominated during the 1990s, where now substituted with the choice including the yellows, the blues and the purples. Representatives from this period are works such as Liquid Light: 32 Degrees (2004) and Strobe Series No. 6 (2007).
Borgelt travels extensively around the world, and the experiences that she gains through these represent continues source of inspiration for the artist. Her exhibition Sol y Sombra, for instance, which was held in the Sherman Galleries in Sydney (2004), have drawn the inspiration from her travel to Spain. The natural beauty of her native Australia has also been a strong source of inspiration for Borgelt and it has found its expression in an abstract language of early Borgelt’s works. Concerning the artistic influences Borgelt states that,
“There was always the influence of other artists when I was much younger studying art in art school – artists like Richard Deibenkorn, Francis Bacon and Willem De Kooning. I found their sense of ‘artistic self’ to be inspiring and encouraging. I also went through a period when I listened a lot to Mahler - this was more an existential period when the emotional material of the German classic composers held my interest. Currently, I find that every discipline, in itself, holds some interest for me: architecture, fashion, contemporary music, design, anything of this actual time we’re living in is interesting, not only from an artistic point of view but also from a sociological perspective.” (Marion Borgelt in private correspondence with Katharine Buljan, August 20, 2007).
Anna Voigt highlights an important point concerning Borgelt’s art practice when she writes that, “The journey of the spirit and of artmaking are inseparable realities for Marion Borgelt.” (Anna Voigt, “Marion Borgelt,” in Australian Painting Now, edited by Laura Murray Cree and Nevill Drury, published by Craftsman House, Sydney, 2000, p. 52).
