Marion Borgelt is a contemporary Australian artist based in Sydney. While originally trained as a painter, she also works in other media such as installation and mixed media.
In Paris Borgelt created a large body of work related to the notion of primordial. Her visual explorations of this notion are reflected in the works such as Primordial Logic and Primordial One: Figures F, B, E, A. In her work Anima/Animus: Splitting Into One No. III, there is a reference to a Jungian theory of the archetypes. Noticeable in these works is the presence of the circle shape, which often occurs in Borgelt's oeuvre. While various shapes have different significance for Borgelt, the circle, as she states," embraces to me the most, and the oval too to a certain degree, but the circle seems to represent to me 'totality.' Because the circle is a contained thing without any tension.". Borgelt's French palette mainly featured blacks, reds and whites. Victoria Lynn notes of Borgelt's work that, "Energy in her paintings can be as soft as a feather or as turbulent as and fierce as a violent storm." Borgelt regularly exhibits in Australia and overseas and has held numerous one-person exhibitions. She has also participated in a number of group exhibitions at national and international events. Borgelt has won the Peter Brown Memorial Travelling Art Scholarship, the Dyson Bequest for work and research in Paris and an Australia Council Creative Arts Fellowship. In 1996 Borgelt was the first Australian recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award. Borgelt's work features in a number of public and private art collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Parliament House Collection, the Powerhouse Museum, University of Sydney, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Bata Shoe Museum, Limerick City Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum and Auckland Museum of Contemporary Art. Borgelt's public commissions include a foyer installation Primordial Alphabet and Rhythm for News Limited in Sydney and the commemorative installation Man's Destiny Resides in the Sole for Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. In 2006 Borgelt had a productive collaboration with Adriano Berengo Glass. The year 2000 marked a change in Borgelt's palette. The reds that predominated during the 1990s, were now substituted with the choice of yellows, the blues and the purples. Works from this period include Liquid Light: 32 Degrees and Strobe Series No. 6. Borgelt travels extensively around the world, and the experiences that she gains represent continuous sources of inspiration. Her exhibition Sol y Sombra, for instance, which was held in the Sherman Galleries in Sydney, drew inspiration from her travels to Spain. The natural beauty of her native Australia has also been a strong source of inspiration for Borgelt and it has found its expression in the abstract language of her early works. Anna Voigt wrote concerning Borgelt's art practice that, “The journey of the spirit and of artmaking are inseparable realities for Marion Borgelt.”. Borgelt's childhood in rural Australia remains integral to her art practice. As for the landscape itself, she "was always both impressed and haunted by the vast flat open space of the Wimmera. In summer it felt like we lived under the sun. It was hot and dusty, wheat fields shimmering as far as the eye could see. It is a place where the earth meets the sky with nothing much in between. There were, of course, the wonderful vernacular structures of the wheat silos, which dotted the horizon. I called them 'The Cathedrals of the Wimmera'. When I was about seventeen, I was desperate to leave.”
