Fred Cress A Hidden Place

Biography:

The life experiences of Fred Cress would lend itself to a myriad of imagery and source material, as he observed the rich, complex and sometimes inequitable aspects of society.

Born into a British military enclave in Poona, in India, in the final years of British imperial rule, Cress grew up in the environment of the colonial Raj.  His childhood education at an isolated private school in the foothills of the Himalayas was no doubt a disconcerting experience for a small child, and so perhaps it was some relief for the young Cress that the family decided to relocate to England, although this country imposed a no less severe class-based environment.

His education at the Birmingham School of Art proved a positive asset to the young artist, whose career and practice blossomed upon his arrival in Australia I 1962, quickly garnering a reputation as a decisive and creative practitioner, dominating contemporary painting in Melbourne, before moving to Sydney in 1975. Reverting to purely figurative in the 1980s, Cress won the Archibald Prize and the People’s Choice in 1988.

From there on his work remained focused on figuration allowing for bold, colourful, energetic and highly imaginative compositions, inclusive of clever filmic and photographic conventions which aimed to capture a moment in time, and which ultimately explored human existence, in all its forms.

Cress represented Australia at the Fifth Indian Triennale in 1982

Artwork

A related artwork “A Secret Place”, 1985 is held in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery.

Bibliography

Fry, Gavin, Fred Cress: Paintings 1965 2000, Beagle Press, Sydney, 2000

Grishin, Sasha, Australian Printmaking in the 1990s: Artist Printmakers 1990-1995, Craftsman House, 1997

Murray-Cree, Laura, & Drury, Nevill, Australian Painting Now, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2000

Murray-Cree, Laura, “Gardens of night and shadow”, Art and Australia, Vol. 35, No. 4, Winter, 1998