Visual Artist
Anne-Marie May
About
Anne-Marie May is a contemporary artist who works across sculpture, installation, design and textiles to explore spatial, perceptual and chromatic relationships.
Making and materiality are central to May’s practice, and a long-standing interest in architecture and craft informs her experimentation with process and the production of objects. Through a multifaceted and intuitive process of reworking materials her practice seeks to create both spatial and conceptual connections between an artwork and its architectural location.
May attained her Doctor of Philosophy, Fine Art, Monash University, Melbourne in 2020.
Widely known for her large scale, brightly coloured suspended sculptures, which hover within a public architectural space. Everything Mobile is Joyful, Shepparton Art Museum, 2021-22, Hook Me Up (synaesthesia), Melbourne Recital Centre, 2018, Untitled (Hemaspectrum), Monash University, Melbourne 2015. These works are able to be viewed from many different vantage points and are designed to rotate of their own accord further enhancing and extending the experience of the artwork beyond its usual boundaries.
First exhibiting in 1988 at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne. She has exhibited extensively since then, and has held regular solo exhibitions in commercial galleries since 1996. Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney (1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000) and Murray White Room, Melbourne (2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2021). Institutional solo and survey exhibitions, Inside Out: Space and Process, McClelland Gallery, 2020, Anne-Marie May Heide II, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2004.
She has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Australian galleries and museums including, Pliable Planes: Textiles in the Expanded Field, UNSW Galleries, Sydney 2022, Connecting the World Through Sculpture- Part 3, In the Air, Monash Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 2021, , Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2017, The Kaleidoscopic Turn, National Gallery of Victoria, 2015, RGB (mobile), commissioned for Melbourne Now and acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria 2013-14. Less is More: Minimal and Post Minimal Art in Australia, Heide Museum of Modern Art 2012, 21st Century Modern: 2006 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1995.
May’s work is held in public collections nationally and internationally, including the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong, Fremantle Art Centre, Fremantle, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. Monash University Art Collection, Deakin University Art Collection.