2009 SEBASTIAN DI MAURO: SCUTA

EXHIBITION IMAGES

Sebastian Di Mauro’s sculptures, installations, paintings and artist books are featured in the collections of many key institutions including Queensland Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Western Australia, McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Victoria, Museum of Brisbane and Artbank. Throughout the past 20 years Di Mauro has held over 35 solo exhibitions and his work has featured in over 90 group exhibitions in Australia and abroad. In 2009 Di Mauro will be honouredwith a survey exhibition at the Queensland University of Technology’s Art Museum.

Di Mauro has been a finalist in numerous prizes and awards including the National Sculpture Prize (2001), McClelland Survey and Award (2003), Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award (2003, 2005, 2007 & 2008), Stan and Maureen Duke Award (2007), and won the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize in 2001. Di Mauro has been awarded several major public artwork commissions and in 2007 he completed an Australia Council residency in Barcelona, Spain.

Working in a variety of mediums Di Mauro creates sculptures of shapes that seem to be ‘alive’ in some way. He manages to imbue lifeless matter with new life, creating a world of quirky, evocative ‘creatures’, a world where puffy balls of neoprene (wetsuit material) can be seen as sea creatures and small rocks as alien life-forms. Di Mauro’s artworks ‘engage the familiar to imagine the improbable’.4

4. Alison Kubler, arts writer, 2007