Simon Pierse
Lecturer in Fine Art
BA (London) MA (Essex) PGCE (Birmingham) PhD (Wales) RWS
Contact
Email: srp@aber.ac.uk
Phone: 01970 622463
Personal Web Site:http://simonpierse.moonfruit.com
Biography
Painter and art historian Simon Pierse trained at the Slade, the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, and Essex University. He is a member of the Royal Watercolour Society and has exhibited throughout Britain, and in Australia, Taiwan, India and the United States. As an art historian, Pierse has published internationally on British and Australian post-war art, contributing chapters to books: Impact of the Modern (Sydney University Press, 2008) and Australians in Britain (Monash University Press, 2009). His articles on Sidney Nolan and Sir Kenneth Clark, the 1961 Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition Recent Australian Painting, paintings of Uluru by Michael Andrews and Lloyd Rees, and Antony Gormley’s Inside Australia installation, have appeared in Art & Australia, the Melbourne Art Journal, and Australian Studies. Pierse's award-winning book Australian Art and Artists in London, 1950-1965: an Antipodean Summer, was published in January 2012 with a grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. He is director of AAiB: the Australian Artists in Britain research project. http://australianartistsinbritain.org
Pierse was a Sir Robert Menzies Bicentennial Fellow in 2000-1 and based at La Trobe University, Melbourne. In 2007-8 he returned to Australia for five months as artist in residence at Dunmoochin, home of Australian artist Clifton Pugh (1924-1990). Pierse is also involved in the organization and curation of exhibitions: both touring exhibitions, such as Terra Incognita (2000-1), and exhibitions designed for the School of Art Galleries, such as Sidney Nolan: A Personal View (2003), selected by Lady Nolan, and staged in collaboration with the Sidney Nolan Trust. In 2005, with the support of the AHRC and collaboration of the Alpine Club, London, the Royal Geographical Society, Fondazione Sella, Biella, and the Roerich Museum, New York, he curated the exhibition Kangchenjunga: Imaging a Himalayan Mountain, to mark the 50th anniversary of the first ascents of the mountain. In 2009 he curated an exhibition of recent paintings by Klaus Friedeberger (b. 1922), and in 2011 he collaborated with the Boundary Gallery to stage an exhibition of paintings and drawings to mark the centenary of Josef Herman RA (1911-2000). Pierse is currently working on the photographs of Keith Vaughan.
Teaching and research supervision covers Fine Art (painting and drawing) and Art History (post-war British and Australian painting, especially British perceptions of Australian art, identity and landscape).