Steve Cox (artist)
Encyclopedia
Steve Cox is an Australian painter and watercolour artist known for his psychologically penetrating images of youths and young men.
, London
, England
and arrived in Melbourne
, Australia
in 1967, when his family emigrated. He studied painting at the Victorian College of the Arts
from 1978 to 1980. In 1983 he was awarded the Keith & Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship and subsequently spent eighteen months making work in London and Cairo
. The same year he was awarded an Australia Council
Grant to spend three months making work at the Villa Ghedini, in Besozzo
, Northern Italy
. Also in 1983, he was included in the important survey of Australian art, Perspecta, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
.
Cox is currently completing a PhD in Art History at Monash University
on the suppression of homoeroticism in western art since the Renaissance and the way in which artists have managed to circumvent this censure.
. Cox has also painted pictures of serial killers Dennis Nilsen
and Peter Manuel
. In 1995, his exhibition Kinderspiel (Child’s Play) dealt exclusively with the subject of children who kill other children. His 1996 Masters Thesis (Deakin University
), titled ‘Murder and Art: the Causal Links’, drew parallels between the creative mind of the artist and the murderous mind of the serial killer.
More recently, Steve Cox's work has explored the phenomena of dance culture; this subject has spawned five exhibitions of portraits of clubbers, drug takers and bouncers, most notably in Rave: Club Culture (2000), Ecstasy: a celebration (2000) and Confessions of a Raving Lunatic (2002).
As a gay artist, Cox has often featured homoeroticism
within his work. His exhibition Testosterone
Zone (1996) dealt with, amongst other things, frank male nudity and the still-existing taboo over public representations of male genitalia. To this end, he has always been outspoken against censorship in the arts, as seen in an interview in issue 11 of Artist Profile
magazine (2010).
For decades, Cox's imagery has often been surreal, using unsettling juxtapositions of symbols. In The New Agrarian (1991), a partially nude boxer spars alone in front of a blackboard in an otherwise empty paddock. In Jelly Kitten (2005) a cartoon head is simultaneously a portrait of a cute children's cartoon character and a tormented mind, much like Sidney Nolan
's Gallipoli series , which featured portraits of returned soldiers.
, Canberra
, and This and Other Worlds, (2005) at the National Gallery of Victoria
, Melbourne. In 2008 he was included in True Crime: Murder and Misdemeanour in Australian Art, at the Geelong Art Gallery
.
In 2008 Cox set up the inaugural Steve Cox Prize for Drawing at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Cox's work is held in The National Gallery of Australia, The National Gallery of Victoria and other important public and private collections throughout Australia. His work has been featured in Nevill Drury's New Art series of books and Sonia Payes' Untitled, a book of photographic portraits of contemporary Australian artists.
. As of February 2010 he is in remission.
In April 2011, Steve was the defendant in the first Facebook stalking lawsuit in Australia involving his previous employer RMIT. The case was thrown out of court.
Early life and education
Cox was born in HarringayHarringay
Harringay is a residential area of North London, part of the London Borough of Haringey, United Kingdom. It is centred on the section of Green Lanes running between the northern boundary of Finsbury Park up to the southern boundary of Duckett's Common, not far from Turnpike Lane.-Location:The...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and arrived in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1967, when his family emigrated. He studied painting at the Victorian College of the Arts
Victorian College of the Arts
The Faculty of the VCA and Music is a faculty of the University of Melbourne, in Victoria . VCAM is located near the Melbourne central business district, on two campuses, one - the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - on the Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne, and the other - the...
from 1978 to 1980. In 1983 he was awarded the Keith & Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship and subsequently spent eighteen months making work in London and Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
. The same year he was awarded an Australia Council
Australia Council
The Australia Council, informally known as the Australia Council for the Arts, is the official arts council or arts funding body of the Government of Australia.-Function:...
Grant to spend three months making work at the Villa Ghedini, in Besozzo
Besozzo
Besozzo is a town and municipality located in the province of Varese, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy.-Overview:Besozzo hosts a small historical centre with churches and noble houses, so-called Palazzi, in its upper part which is in part pedestrian zone, and a vivid modern centre with...
, Northern Italy
Northern Italy
Northern Italy is a wide cultural, historical and geographical definition, without any administrative usage, used to indicate the northern part of the Italian state, also referred as Settentrione or Alta Italia...
. Also in 1983, he was included in the important survey of Australian art, Perspecta, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...
.
Cox is currently completing a PhD in Art History at Monash University
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
on the suppression of homoeroticism in western art since the Renaissance and the way in which artists have managed to circumvent this censure.
Career
His early work dealt with the aberrant psychology of murderers and their victims. In 1987 he staged an exhibition of paintings about the 1960s British Moors murderersMoors Murderers
"Moors Murderers" can refer to:*Moors murders*The Moors Murderers, an early band of Chrissie Hynde before she formed The Pretenders....
. Cox has also painted pictures of serial killers Dennis Nilsen
Dennis Nilsen
Dennis Andrew Nilsen also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer and the Kindly Killer is a British serial killer who lived in London....
and Peter Manuel
Peter Manuel
Peter Thomas Anthony Manuel was a United States-born Scottish serial killer who is known to have murdered nine people across Lanarkshire and southern Scotland between 1956 and his arrest in January 1958, although he is suspected of having killed as many as eighteen...
. In 1995, his exhibition Kinderspiel (Child’s Play) dealt exclusively with the subject of children who kill other children. His 1996 Masters Thesis (Deakin University
Deakin University
Deakin University is an Australian public university with nearly 40,000 higher education students in 2010. It receives more than A$600 million in operating revenue annually, and controls more than A$1.3 billion in assets. It received more than A$35 million in research income in 2009 and had 835...
), titled ‘Murder and Art: the Causal Links’, drew parallels between the creative mind of the artist and the murderous mind of the serial killer.
More recently, Steve Cox's work has explored the phenomena of dance culture; this subject has spawned five exhibitions of portraits of clubbers, drug takers and bouncers, most notably in Rave: Club Culture (2000), Ecstasy: a celebration (2000) and Confessions of a Raving Lunatic (2002).
As a gay artist, Cox has often featured homoeroticism
Homoeroticism
Homoeroticism refers to the erotic attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female , most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements...
within his work. His exhibition Testosterone
Testosterone
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands...
Zone (1996) dealt with, amongst other things, frank male nudity and the still-existing taboo over public representations of male genitalia. To this end, he has always been outspoken against censorship in the arts, as seen in an interview in issue 11 of Artist Profile
Artist Profile
Artist Profile is an international contemporary art magazine published in Sydney, Australia.-Publication:Founded in 2007, Artist Profile is released 4 times a year and distributed across Australia, Oceania, North America, Southeast Asia and South Africa...
magazine (2010).
For decades, Cox's imagery has often been surreal, using unsettling juxtapositions of symbols. In The New Agrarian (1991), a partially nude boxer spars alone in front of a blackboard in an otherwise empty paddock. In Jelly Kitten (2005) a cartoon head is simultaneously a portrait of a cute children's cartoon character and a tormented mind, much like Sidney Nolan
Sidney Nolan
Sir Sidney Robert Nolan OM, AC was one of Australia's best-known painters and printmakers.-Early life:Nolan was born in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, on 22 April 1917. He was the eldest of four children. His family later moved to St Kilda. Nolan attended the Brighton Road State School and...
's Gallipoli series , which featured portraits of returned soldiers.
Exhibitions
Since 1982 he has held more than twenty-eight one-person exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, and has participated in over forty group-exhibitions, including Moist: Australian Watercolours, (2005) at the National Gallery of AustraliaNational Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
, Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
, and This and Other Worlds, (2005) at the National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
, Melbourne. In 2008 he was included in True Crime: Murder and Misdemeanour in Australian Art, at the Geelong Art Gallery
Geelong Art Gallery
The Geelong Art Gallery is a major regional gallery in the city of Geelong in Victoria, Australia. The gallery has approximately 4,000 works of art in its collection...
.
In 2008 Cox set up the inaugural Steve Cox Prize for Drawing at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Cox's work is held in The National Gallery of Australia, The National Gallery of Victoria and other important public and private collections throughout Australia. His work has been featured in Nevill Drury's New Art series of books and Sonia Payes' Untitled, a book of photographic portraits of contemporary Australian artists.
Personal life
He has two children, Eden Fabienne Cox (born 1986) and Hadrian Valentine Cox (born 1989). In October 2009 he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphomaNon-Hodgkin lymphoma
The non-Hodgkin lymphomas are a diverse group of blood cancers that include any kind of lymphoma except Hodgkin's lymphomas. Types of NHL vary significantly in their severity, from indolent to very aggressive....
. As of February 2010 he is in remission.
In April 2011, Steve was the defendant in the first Facebook stalking lawsuit in Australia involving his previous employer RMIT. The case was thrown out of court.
Collections
- National Gallery of AustraliaNational Gallery of AustraliaThe National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
, Canberra, ACT - National Gallery of VictoriaNational Gallery of VictoriaThe National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
, Melbourne - Ian Potter CentreIan Potter CentreThe Ian Potter Centre houses the Australian part of the art collection of the National Gallery of Victoria , and is located at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia...
, Melbourne - La Trobe UniversityLa Trobe UniversityLa Trobe University is a multi-campus university in Victoria, Australia. It was established in 1964 by an Act of Parliament to become the third oldest university in the state of Victoria. The main campus of La Trobe is located in the Melbourne suburb of Bundoora; two other major campuses are...
Collection, Melbourne - Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, VIC
- Victorian College of the ArtsVictorian College of the ArtsThe Faculty of the VCA and Music is a faculty of the University of Melbourne, in Victoria . VCAM is located near the Melbourne central business district, on two campuses, one - the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - on the Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne, and the other - the...
, Melbourne - Benalla Art Gallery
- The Estate of Reggie Kray
- The Estate of Francis BaconFrancis BaconFrancis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...