DrAlex Gawronski

Dr Alex Gawronski is a contemporary artist working across multiple media as well as a writer and independent gallerist. He has a particular interest in the implications of galleries and museums as cultural sites of spatial and socio-political contestation. Gawronski's PhD, No New Utopia: The Crisis of Art as Critique Under Globalisation was awarded by the University of Sydney in 2006. It considered the challenges posed by the multifarious commercialising trends, vastly accelerated by global neoliberalism, to contemporary art as a form of critical practice. Gawronski has exhibited widely nationally and internationally.

He was included in the inaugural The National: New Australian Art for which he was commissioned to produce three large-scale sculptural interventions across the Art Gallery of NSW, the MCA and Carriage Works (2017). Gawronski also has a long history founding and directing independent Artist Run Initiatives (ARIs) like the Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown (I.C.A.N.) (2007-2015), KNULP (2015-2024) and currently ethan frome in Camperdown (2015 - ). His most recent book chapter, 'Curated from Within: The Artist as Curator' considers the historical centrality of artist curated exhibitions to contemporary curatorial practices and is published in the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Curation (2020). Gawronski was a recipient of the NAVA/Copyright Agency Mid-career Fellowship in 2018.