Noel Ivanoff has consistently investigated the structures and supports on which paintings are made and presented as well as ongoing dialogue around the three dimensionality of painting. His works are manufactured in ways that explore the relationship between gesture and control and how paint can be applied and removed from a work using utilitarian methods.
Read MoreHe has a particular interest in how paintings are stored and transported and how the means of their transportation might be an active visual and conceptual element. As well as demonstrating a finely tuned attention to the artist as fabricator, his practice also embraces and responds to readymade objects, in the form of flat-packed boxes and wooden pallets, that acknowledge the structure of art and the industry and architecture that is its support.
In his most recent work Ivanoff examines the constituent elements of paint and the process of simultaneously making both paint and painting. He uses a circular grinding tool, a levigator, that applies, mixes and grinds pigment with binder all at the same time. The works are executed in one movement in a form of action painting that acknowledges domestic and commercial modes of production.
Born in 1963 in Lower Hutt, Ivanoff studied at Otago Polytechnic before moving to London where he trained at the St Martins School of Art in the mid-1980′s. In 1999, he completed a Masters degree at the University of Auckland and is now Head of Fine Arts and Photography at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design. A three-time finalist of the James Wallace awards his work is also included in the Chartwell Collection and in many private collections
