Michael Zavros (b.1974) is a leading Australian artist. He graduated from Queensland College of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1996. His work has since been exhibited in major museums throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe.
Read MoreIn 2012 Michael Zavros was awarded the inaugural Bulgari Art Award through the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2010 he was awarded the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, the world's richest prize for portraiture. He has won three major Australian drawing prizes: the 2002 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, the 2005 Robert Jacks Drawing Prize and the 2007 Kedumba Drawing Award, and has been a multiple Archibald Prize finalist. He was the recipient of the 2004 MCA Primavera Collex Art Award.
Zavros has been the subject of major survey exhibitions, The Favourite at Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in 2023, and Magic Mike at Newcastle Art Gallery in 2017. Zavros has shown solo exhibitions at Art Los Angeles Contemporary in 2016 and Art Basel Hong Kong in 2015. Other shows include Bad Dad at Starkwhite, Auckland, 2014; A Private Collection: Artist Choice, Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, 2013; The Prince, Rockhampton Art Gallery and Griffith University Art Gallery, 2013; Selectively Revealed, an Asialink and Experimenta Media Arts exhibition that toured to Korea, Indonesia and Thailand in 2012; The Good Son: Works on Paper, a survey exhibition at Gold Coast City Art Gallery, 2009; New Nature at Govett Brewster Gallery, New Zealand in 2007, and Uncanny (the unnaturally strange), Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand, 2005, and Everything I wanted at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane in 2003/2004.
Zavros's selected Australian group exhibitions include Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2016 at Art Gallery of South Australia; GOMAQ at Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2015; Wilderness at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2010; Scott Redford Vs Michael Zavros at the Institute of Modern Art, 2010; Contemporary Australia: Optimism at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2008, and Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2000.
Zavros has been the recipient of several international residencies including the Australia Council Greene Street Studio, New York, 2014 Milan studio residency in 2001, and the Barcelona studio in both 2005 and 2010. In 2003 he was awarded a Cite International des Arts Residency in Paris through the Power Institute, University of Sydney. In 2004 he was awarded a studio residency at the Gunnery Studios, Sydney, from the NSW Ministry for the Arts.
In 2013 he was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial to paint a portrait of Victoria Cross winner Ben Roberts-Smith and in 2016 he will paint Dame Quentin Bryce for the National Portrait Gallery. He served on the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts between 2007 and 2011 and currently serves on the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) board.
His work is held in numerous private and public collections, including The National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, University of Queensland Art Museum, Artbank, National Portrait Gallery, Griffith University Art Collection, Newcastle Region Art Gallery and Tasmanian Museum and Gallery.
Text courtesy Starkwhite.
