About

Artist Biography

Victor Gordon

MA (SCA) BA (Wits)

South African born, Victor Gordon has exhibited his art in Australia since 1987. Primarily a painter and sculptor, he also creates installations assemblages, collages, drawings and photographs. His wide ranging concerns and techniques offer uncompromising, refreshingly unique and often quirky and challenging artistic statements. Socially aware he considers himself an engaged artist.

His work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of South Africa in Cape Town, the South African Constitution Court Collection in Johannesburg, the University of South Africa (Unisa) in Tshwane/Pretoria as well as the Ifa Lethu Collection, also based in Tshwane/ Pretoria.

When not [subversively] exploiting the endless possibilities and permutations of Realism, Gordon’s work embodies a matured awareness of the diametric opposition between nineteenth-century painterly realism and twentieth-century modernist devices. Recognizable symbols and quotations are manipulated to offer fresh multi-layered interpretations and readings. Gordon is not afraid, however, to explore serious issues with humour and acute wit.

Gordon’s art acknowledges the past whilst simultaneously addressing contemporary issues.

Initially growing up in Alberton a satellite township near Johannesburg Gordon attended Germiston then Parktown Boys High. He was conscripted for military service in the South African Air Force between 1971–1972. He undertook undergraduate studies for the Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Witwatersrand from 1977 to 1980. He stood unsuccessfully as a Progressive Party candidate in the Vrededorp/Mayfair electorate in the municipal elections in 1982.

Thereafter he managed the University SRC Administration from 1982 to 1987 in a highly politicized capacity as an administrative ombudsman, ameliorating the effects of security police intimidation and oppression on students. He immigrated to Australia in 1987 and enrolled in a Graduate Master of Visual Arts (by research) programme at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney graduating in 1991.

He taught part-time at Sydney College of The Arts – University of Sydney 1989 -1993, at University of Western Sydney and at various Metropolitan TAFE colleges.  In 1999 he relocated to Broken Hill NSW where he ran the Art School until 1993, when he transferred to Orange NSW to head the bigger Art and Music School until 2013.

View Gordon’s professional exhibition history

Read more in the Artist’s Essay … “What about what if is as or is is”  (The origins of my art, 1953-1983)