Working exclusively in pastel on paper, Maria Kontis creates finely detailed drawings of fragments and memories. Old photographs, crumpled pages and images from souvenir pamphlets are all rendered in monochrome. These works take the viewer beyond the object and beyond the image into notions of vision and temporality.
Read MoreKontis has held solo exhibitions in Australia and Europe for over a decade and is regularly included in group exhibitions in Australia and internationally including I walk the line: new Australian drawing, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2009); Moving Horizons: The UBS Art Collection 1952 to 2007, National Museum of Fine Art, Beijing (2008); Memories for Tomorrow: Works from the UBS Collection, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (2008); UBS Openings: Drawing, Tate Modern, London (2007); An Incomplete World: Works from the UBS Art Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and National Gallery of Victoria, The Ian Potter Center, Melbourne (2007); and Anticipation, David Roberts Gallery, London (2007).
After completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW in 1999, Kontis undertook an MA in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. In 2003 Kontis was awarded The Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, and in 2002 the Paris Residency, Cité Internationale des Artes, awarded by the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney.
Kontis’ work is held in the UBS Art Collection; the University of the Arts London; Artbank; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and Grafton Regional Gallery.
