Keith Looby (born 1940 in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

, Australia), is an Australian artist who won the

Archibald Prize The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, J. F. Archib ...

in 1984 with a portrait of

Max Gillies Maxwell Irvine Gillies AM (born 16 November 1941) is an Australian actor and a founding member of the 1970s experimental theatre company, the Australian Performing Group. Early life and education Gillies studied art teaching at Frankston Te ...

Early life and education

Looby was raised in the Sydney suburbs of Newtown and Bondi. He studied at East Sydney Technical College (now The National Art School) from 1955 to 1959, where his teachers included

John Passmore John Arthur Passmore (9 September 1914 – 25 July 2004) was an Australian philosopher. Life John Passmore was born on 9 September 1914 in Manly, Sydney, where he grew up. He was educated at Sydney Boys High School. Sydney High School Old ...

and he soon became part of the

Sydney Push The Sydney Push was an intellectual subculture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. Its politics were predominantly left-wing libertarianism. The Push operated in a pub culture and included university students, academics, manual w ...

. He travelled overseas in 1960 and lived in Italy and London until 1967. In 1964, he held his first solo exhibition at the Carpini Gallery, Rome. An elaborate pencil drawing was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in the 1960s.

Australian history and ''Suburbs of the Sacred''

Looby produced two books of drawings and illustrations on the history of Australia: ''The History of Australia'' in 1976, with poet David Campbell, representing the history of Australia up to the arrival of the English, with songs and poems inspired by the drawings and by Aboriginal myths and rock engravings of the Sydney Hawkesbury area; and ''Black and white history of Australia'' in 1979, in which he interprets aspects of Australian history, beginning with Indigenous Australia before European settlement, and the subsequent effects of settlement on Aboriginal Australia, among other episodes of foundational mythology, Ned Kelly, The Goldfields, The Bush etc. In 1988, Australian

political activist A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some ...

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

historian and cultural commentator

Humphrey McQueen Humphrey Dennis McQueen (born 26 June 1942) is an Australian public intellectual, historian, activist, and former Associate Professor in Social and International Relations at the University of Tokyo. Over the course of his career he has written ...

wrote ''Suburbs of the Sacred, Transforming Australian Beliefs and Values'', an "examination of Australian suburban culture through the artwork of Keith Looby".

Selected exhibition history

Looby commercially exhibited with the Ray Hughes Gallery in Brisbane and then in Sydney from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. His painting ''Resurrection'' (1964) was exhibited in the historical retrospective ''Federation: Australian art and society 1901-2001'', curated by John McDonald at the

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, the afterparty of which resulted in the ending of Looby's "28 year marriage" with Hughes. In 1992, Julie Ewington curated ''School class to playground, 1958-1992 / Keith Looby'', at Canberra School of Art Gallery; a retrospective drawing on a long-running series of paintings and prints based on Looby's own school experience, as an early site of social relation, class and institutionalisation. In 2021, Looby returned to exhibiting with concurrent exhibitions at 484 Presents in Melbourne and Spud Lane Studios in Robertson, NSW.

Awards

Looby has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize at the

Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most import ...

multiple times between 1974 and 2000: Other notable awards include the

Blake Prize for Religious Art The Blake Prize, formerly the Blake Prize for Religious Art, is an Australian art prize awarded for art that explores spirituality. Since the inaugural prize in 1951, the prize was awarded annually from 1951 to 2015, and since 2016 has been a ...

in 1973 and the Sulman Prize in 1974. In 1981, Looby received an Australia Council New York studio residency, whilst in 1973–1974 he was artist in residence at the Australian National University. In 1992, Looby was named Canberra Artist of the Year.

''Looby'' documentary

In 2019, the artist was the subject of a documentary film ''Looby'', co-directed by Nick Garner and Iain Knight, produced by Merilyn Alt and Sean Murphy. The documentary featured interviews with

McLean Edwards McLean Edwards is an Australian painter and portraitist. In 2019 he was awarded ⁣⁣⁣⁣the 2019 Sir John Sulman Prize. Early life and education McLean Edwards was born in 1972 in Darwin, Northern Territoryto Gregson Edwards and Maria Br ...

, Julie Ewington,

, Adam Hill (aka

Blak Douglas __NOTOC__ Blak Douglas, formerly known as Adam Douglas Hill, is an Aboriginal Australian artist and musician. he is based in Sydney, New South Wales. Early life and education He is a Dhungatti man, with Irish, Scots, English, and German anc ...

), John McDonald,

, and Damien Minton.

Personal life

Looby was married to Helen Beresford, with whom he has two children, and abstract artist Kerry Gregan, with whom he has a son. Keith Looby lives with his partner April Pressler on Sydney's lower north shore.

References

* ''Suburbs of the Sacred, Transforming Australian Beliefs and Values'', Penguin, 1988, 269pp.

External links

* * 1940 births Australian painters Archibald Prize winners Living people Artists from Sydney Blake Prize for Religious Art winners 20th-century Australian artists {{Australia-painter-stub