John Nixon

Australia, 1949 -2020

John Nixon lived in Briar Hill, Melbourne.

An early and steadfast exponent of the minimalist sensibility in Australia, Nixon had his first solo exhibition in 1973 at Pinacotheca in Melbourne and, around a decade later, in 1982, was selected by Germano Celant to represent Australia at Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany. Before long, all major state museums in Australia had collected his work. In 1999 he was the winner of Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, Melbourne and in 2001/02 he was the recipient of an Australia Council Fellowship Award. Nixon’s 2014 solo exhibitions were in New York and Amsterdam, and also in 2014, besides his inclusion in One Place After Another at PICA, his work was included in the exhibition Elementary Painting at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallan in Switzerland.

Several large-scale exhibitions surveying aspects of his work have been held at: the City Gallery in Wellington in 1997, Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1997, Kunstmuseum Singen in Germany, Kunstmuseum Baselland in Basel, Switzerland, Stiftung fur Konkrete Kunst in Reutlingen, Germany, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth; the TarraWarra Museum of Art in Healesville and at KalimanRawlins in Melbourne.

Nixon had regular solo exhibitions at: Anna Schwartz Gallery in Melbourne, Sarah Cottier Gallery in Sydney, Goddard de Fiddes Gallery in Perth, Sue Crockford Gallery in Auckland, Hamish McKay Gallery in Wellington and Galerie Mark Müller in Zurich.