Godwin Bradbeer


Godwin Bradbeer is a New Zealand-born artist now living and working in Australia whose work has evolved from his photo-media to pure drawing.

Biography

Bradbeer was born in 1950 in New Zealand. The same year his family moved to Glasgow, Scotland, migrating to Australia in 1955. In 1971, he received a Higher Diploma of Secondary Education at the Melbourne Teachers College and taught in Victorian high schools from 1972 to 1982. He returned to study in 1983, completing a Bachelor of Education at the Melbourne College of Advanced Education in 1984. In 1986, he married Gabrielle Pervesi. From 1983 to 2010, he lectured in drawing and painting at various institutions including the Victorian College of the Arts, Monash University and RMIT University.In 1994, he completed a Master of Art at RMIT University. Since 2010, he has guest lectured at various institutions.
Bradbeer held his first solo exhibition in 1977 in Melbourne, and his first international exhibition in Hong Kong in 1999. He won the Dobell Drawing Prize in 1998 and was a finalist for the prize in 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011, and 2012. In 2014, he published a book of poetry, Half truths: in lyric verse.

Artistic style and subject

Bradbeer began as a photographer but came to focus on drawing and his style has been described as ‘drawing for the temple not the café’. His drawings are focused on the ‘large-scale images of the human form’.

Awards/Prizes/Residencies

Dobell Drawing Prize

Collections

Bradbeer's work is held in the following collections: