Alvaro Alvarez, is an artist based in Melbourne, Australia, working primarily as a painter.
Career, themes and style
Alvaro Alvarez's recent work combines painting and drawing, based on images from books, magazines and old calendars. After careful examination of this content, Alvarez recreates the imagery in his paintings using a methodical process of fine brushwork and soft lines. Layers of these techniques are often visible on the surface of a finished work where Alvarez has erased evidence of early mark making to begin again, giving the artworks an ethereal quality. As the Sydney Morning Herald writes of Alvarez's practice, "Alvaro Alvarez creates rippling, vibrant paint and texta abstractions from images found online." Alvarez has exhibited his work internationally and throughout Australia and currently practices at Melbourne studio Arts Project Australia. Alvarez is an important figure in Australian outsider art and has exhibited his works across Melbourne Arts Centre, the Museum of Everything in London and Campbelltown Arts Centre and Monash University Museum of Art.
Solo exhibitions
2005 Alvaro Going Solo, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne
Selected group exhibitions
2016 Signature Style, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne Tell 'em I'm dead, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne 2015 It takes more than 140 characters to write a novel, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne Home, locations around Melbourne Arts Centre, Melbourne 2014 Renegades: Outsider Art, The Arts Centre Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise Darebin Art Show, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Bundoora 2013 Repeat. Restate…Reiterate, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne Walking the Line, Arts Project Australia Gallery, Melbourne 2011 Exhibition #4, Museum of Everything, London Moving Galleries, Flinders Street Station, Melbourne 2010 Melbourne Art Fair 2010, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne 2009 Snapshot, ACGA Gallery, Federation Square, Melbourne 2008 Pearls of Arts Project Australia - The Stuart Purves Collection, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Sydney Without Borders: Outsider Art in an Antipodean Context, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, and Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney 2005 Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York Home Sweet Home: Works from the Peter Fay Collection, National Gallery of Australia Travelling exhibition: Tamworth City Gallery, Tamworth NSW, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand 2004 2nd Annual Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art, Chicago, United States Hosted by the Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York 2001 Face-Up, Idiom Studio, Wellington, New Zealand
