Michael Berry
Sculptor (Melbourne, VIC)

Although not formally art-trained - (a blessing he asserts) - Michael says “I have been taught the universal visual language by all the great masters of every era”, and passionately studies everyone from Tiepolo and Titian to Miro, Braque and Picasso and beyond to Pollock, Tobey, Gorky, Krasner, Cornell, Nevelson and Matta.

Working outside mainstream commercial flow, Michael’s own painting, drawing, assemblage and sculpture is cutting-edge abstraction – “symphonic space” as he terms it - and as such is synonymous with his exploration of the manner in which the human mind functions in images.

However, he is sympathetic to the genuine exploration of representational-realist painting and drawing, as without solid grounding in that structure, abstraction as the consummate visual language cannot occur.

Over his 30-year career he has held several solo shows in regional galleries, been artist-in-residence, produced three monumental public sculptures with student assistants, been included in the short list for a sculptural commission for the entrance of the National Gallery of Victoria, and contributed three pieces in the Third Australian Sculptural Triennial, also at the NGV.

Late in 2004 Michael was commissioned to create the monumental “Entropy of individuality” for the Glass Gallery at the Frankston Arts Centre.

He has held 10 one man shows and been in many group exhibitions – notably selected to hang in the Inaugural John Olsen Drawing Prize – has a painting in the Hamilton Regional Gallery collection, and is represented in numerous private and corporate collections.

He formed BerryKeen Design Ceramics with Gary Keen in 1990 and together they exhibited on-glaze enamel and gold lustre painted ceramics throughout Australia, New Zealand and in New York.

Michael is a freelance journalist, arts writer/profiler, critic, playwright, poet, lyricist and published author of “73 Selected Contemporary Artists of Australia”, and is currently working on several essays and books.

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