Janet Burchill facts for kids

Janet Burchill (born on December 12, 1955) is a well-known Australian artist. She creates art using many different methods. These include painting, sculpture, and film. She also makes art installations, which are like art environments. Since the mid-1980s, she has worked closely with Jennifer McCamley. Janet Burchill's art is part of the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art. This is a special collection of art by women.

About Janet Burchill

Janet Burchill was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on December 12, 1955. She still lives in Melbourne today. There, she continues to create her amazing artworks.

Her Art Journey

Janet Burchill studied Visual Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts. While she was in Sydney, she helped start the Super 8 Collective. This was a group of artists who made films using Super 8 cameras. Other artists in the group included Mark Titmarsh and Lindy Lee.

In 1983, Janet finished her Bachelor of Arts degree. She was very interested in sculpture and film. For her final exhibition, she made a piece called Aporia (1984). This artwork spelled out the word "Aporia" across six canvases. Since then, she has often used single colors in her art. This has been a big part of her style.

Her early artworks, from 1984 to 1987, used industrial materials. She also used screenprinting and airbrushing. These works explored how language and images connect. She would put words like MUTE or RETURN on metal and canvas boards. This showed how language can have limits.

In 1983, Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley started working together. Jennifer studied film and philosophy. This helped Janet, who had trained in sculpture and film. Both artists wanted to look closely at art history and culture. They often used a feminist point of view. In 1984, they made a Super 8 film called Bath girls. This film was a response to Andy Warhol's 1967 film, Tub Girls. Their film was fifteen minutes long. It was shown at film festivals in Sydney.

Janet and Jennifer were influenced by a group of artists called the Pictures Generation. These artists included Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger. One of their early works is Temptation To Exist (Tippi) (1986). It shows two pictures from Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film, The Birds. The pictures show actress Tippi Hedren after being attacked by birds. The two images are on aluminum and separated by a black bar. Through these images, Burchill and McCamley explored ideas about how we look at things in movies.

From 1991 to 1997, Burchill and McCamley lived and worked in Berlin, Germany. They received an art residency and scholarship there. During this time, Janet created a photo series called Freiland. These photos showed an outdoor meeting area. She documented how it changed after the Berlin Wall fell. The photos showed the sad look of the area. This helped Janet show the social and political problems in East Germany. The area was built by Turkish immigrants. They had worked in Germany but did not have citizenship. These photos were shown in 1997 and again in 2017. They were displayed at the National Gallery of Australia.

In 2001 and 2002, Janet made installation pieces. These included Pre-paradise sorry now and Wall Unit. She used wood, bronze, and neon lights. These works were inspired by modern art and 1930s designs. Wall Unit was entered in the National Gallery of Victoria's National Sculpture Prize in 2001.

In the early 2010s, Janet's art focused on images from activism. Her 2013 exhibition with Jennifer McCamley was called Legion. It combined the famous Guy Fawkes mask with traditional shields from Papua New Guinea. The Guy Fawkes mask is known from the group Anonymous.

In 2019, the Heide Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition. It celebrated 35 years of Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley working together. The exhibition was called Temptation to Co-Exist. It showed many of their past artworks.

Artworks by Janet Burchill

• 1981-1985 80 Slides
• 1982 Soft Geometry
• 1982 Silver Bullets
• 1984 Bathgirls '84
• 1986 Temptation to Exist (Tippi)
• 1992 Dedication (Containment)
• 1992-2002 Freiland
• 1994 Worlds Part 1: Nature nature
• 2000 Room with my soul left out
• 2001 Pre-paradise sorry now (chairs for reclining bodies)
• 2001 Wall Unit (origin of the World)
• 2003 Fear eats the soul
• 2004 All that rises must converge
• 2005 SAFE
• 2007 Total Economy
• 2008 Inland Empire
• 2013 Legion
• 2015 Falling Water
• 2016 Point Blank
• 2016 Bricks and Buttercups
• 2019 Throw Field

Awards

• 2018 NAVA Visual Arts Fellowship

Exhibitions

• 1984 Future Unperfect
  • Artspace, Sydney
• 1984 Rites of Decay
• 1985 Virtually there; Super 8: Australian Perspecta '85
• 1990 Questions of Belief
• 1990 The Ready Made Boomerang
  • 8th Biennale of Sydney
• 1995 Out of the Void: Mad and Bad Women
• 1995 In the Company of Women: 100 years of Australian Women's art from the Cruther's Collection
• 2001 Tip of the Iceberg: selected works from 1985 to 2001
  • UQ Art Museum and Ian Potter Museum of Art
• 2005 Neon
  • Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
• 2007 Turrabal-Jagera
  • University Art Museum, University of Queensland, Brisbane
• 2008 Inland Empire
  • Solar Neon, IASKA, Western Australia
• 2011 A Different Temporality: Aspects of Australian Feminist Art Practice 1975-1985
  • Curated by Kyla McFarlane for Monash University Museum of Art
• 2015 Imaginary Accord
  • Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
• 2019 Temptation to Co-Exist
  • curated by Sue Cramer for the Heide Museum of Modern Art