Rodney Forbes

• Lecturer, Gippsland Centre for Art & Design
• Acting Head of Centre for Art & Design

Qualifications

• MA(Fine Arts), Monash

Statement

Rodney Forbes began his working life as a missile systems technician at Williamstown Naval Dockyard and his painting deals with themes as various as rocket science, sufi stories and fashion dilemmas. Forbes is interested in how people tell stories. His work is in figurative narrative painting and uses autobiographical and incident-as-metaphor methods to explore wider issues of knowing and belonging in oral traditions such as working class, childrens' and artisan subcultures.

Forbes' work is held in the Australian National Gallery, Regional galleries and numerous private collections. He is represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne and Sydney.

As narrative paintings made at the end of the twentieth century, the works of Rodney Forbes contain not only the intrinsic richness of a fund of anecdote and remembrance, but also the complications of self-conscious formal structure and historical context.
 The depiction of a particular episode or moment not only summarises and focuses a wider and more complex narrative, but also implies some social or moral content. This critical-moral dimension is a constant in Forbes' painting, and reflects his early practice as a worker-cartoonist before he took up painting full-time, but it is also a common feature of recent Australian figuration: the device of 'incident as metaphor' features strongly in the work of painters as superficially different as Jon Cattapan, David Keeling and Stewart MacFarlane. Furthermore, while there are moral inferences to be found in most of Forbes' narratives, he has also produced a number of purely fantastic-satirical works, invented tableaux where message takes priority over story….Forbes' poetic visions derive not only from the things he sees, but also from the very act of seeing.

- David Hansen 
'The breath of memory' 
Latrobe Regional Gallery 1994

Researh/professional activities

Individual Exhibitions

• 2008 - Slow Painting, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 2007 -  Dumb Tidings, Australian Galleries, Sydney
• 2006 - Rodney Forbes:  1995 - 2005, Latrobe Regional Gallery
  2 RIVERS, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 2004 - when you're a boy, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 2002 -  ROCKET SCIENCE, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 2001 -  More songs about dancing and horses, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 2000 -  Masters Research Exhibition, Faculty Gallery, Faculty of Art and Design, Monash     
   University
• 1998 - Like Ice, Like Fire, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 1995 - Rodney Forbes, Recent Paintings, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 1994 - Rodney Forbes; Paintings 1983-1993 Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell. 
  Survey exhibition (touring to Mornington, Mildura, Wangaratta)
• 1994 - Rodney Forbes, Recent Paintings, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 1992 - Rodney Forbes, Recent Paintings, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 1991 - Rodney Forbes, Recent Paintings, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 1989 - Rodney Forbes, Paintings and Drawings, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
• 1987 - Out of the Bay and Into the Valley, Latrobe Valley Arts Centre, Morwell.

Selected Group Exhibitions

• 2007 - Electric Valley Studios, Switchback Gallery, Monash University
• 2006 - Round and Round and Round and Round, Albury Regional Art Gallery, NSW
• 2005 - 24 Hour Love presented by Clubs in the Pines, Switchback Gallery, Monash  
  University
• 2004 - The FOUND Project, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell
• 2003 -  Energy to Burn, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell
• 2002 - Jon Campbell's Rock the Boat, Switchback Gallery, Monash University
• 2000 - Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Australian Galleries exhibit
• 2000 - Dancing Made a Man Out of Me, Switchback Gallery, Monash University
• 1997 - Figurative Forces. Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria
• 1997 - Revealing Art. Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria
• 1996 - The Incident, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria
• 1995 - Comedie Humaine, Australian Galleries, Sydney
• 1994 - A4 Art, Westspace, Melbourne
• 1993 - On the Other Hand, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney
• 1991 - Indo-Eco, Touring Exhibition. Latrobe Valley Arts Centre, Linden Gallery, Victoria
• 1990 - Contemporary Gippsland Artists, Touring Exhibition. Latrobe Valley Arts
• 1990 - Centre, Victoria. Touring to Shepparton, Wagga Wagga, Mildura, Gold Coast, Townsville,  Lismore, Broken Hill, Mt. Gambier, University of South Australia Art Museum, Monash University Gallery.
• 1989 - Art and Work, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria
• 1988 - 100 x 100 Portfolio, Print Council of Australia Bicentennial Touring Exhibition

Public Collections, Awards

• Australian National Gallery, Canberra (folio)
• Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Wearable Art Collection
• Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria
• Albury Regional Art Gallery
• Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale
• Artbank
• Print Council of Australia
• Australia Council, Visual Arts and Crafts Board. Artist's Development Grant 1990

Other

Rodney Forbes is represented in Melbourne and Sydney by Australian Galleries