STEPHEN HALEY

Stephen came late to art first completing a BA in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne and then bummed about travelling widely and working in a variety of appalling jobs until 28 years of age. Since then he has completed a BFA (RMIT), a Postgraduate Diploma (Victorian College of the Arts), a Master of Fine Art (Victorian College of the Arts) and a PhD (Faculty of VCA and MCM, University of Melbourne). He has been a lecturer and tutor in Visual Art History and Theory and in Painting Studio at Monash University, RMIT and the Victorian College of the Arts/Faculty of VCA and MCM where he has taught in various capacities since 2000. Stephen also has an extensive writing record, publishing a large number of critical essays, reviews and catalogue essays.

Working primarily with painting and digital media, Haley has produced sixteen solo exhibitions and participated in over one hundred curated group exhibitions, many internationally. His work features in wide number of collections and has won several awards including the ANZ Visual Arts Fellowship Award in 2004 and the Deacon, Graham and James/Arts 21 Residency Award in 1998 that funded a four month studio in Tokyo. His recent work is concerned with Western space - both real and virtual - and how the real is increasingly supplanted and preceded by the virtual forms of the digital and the model. The iconography is often drawn from the localized landscape of the suburbs and the poetics of the mirror. In 2006 Haley received the Australia Council for the Arts Overseas Studio Residency Award and spent three months in Los Angeles researching the city's many thematic spaces. In 2006 he also won the prestigious R M McGivern Acquisitive Prize for painting. He is represented in Melbourne by Nellie Castan Gallery and internationally by Lumas Gallery, Berlin.