Jennifer Joseph

“(Jennifer) Joseph is not driven to exhibit her art publicly, but on the occasions she does, we are always presented with a body of work that is both beautiful and absolutely authentic.” Kirsty Grant, former Director, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2019

Jennifer Joseph’s poetically titled, uncompromisingly abstract paintings, works on paper, assemblages and sculptures have a distinctively transformative quality. Collage, an important aspect of Joseph’s practice, is employed to highlight the intrinsic qualities of those materials selected. New life is breathed into the discarded, overlooked, found objects that she incorporates into much of her minimalist work.

Joseph’s artistic process is inextricably linked with her life; her nocturnal existence circumventing the inevitable interruptions one is faced with during the daylight hours. This allows Joseph to sit for long, contemplative periods, considering a work before she physically executes it. She balances intuition with finely honed skill, developed over nearly forty years of dedicated studio practice, so that when the time comes, she is deeply focused, completing her work at great speed, with fervour.

Her career can be described as a continual paring back, her current work characterised by refinement and restraint, featuring only the most essential marks.

Born in Melbourne in 1949, Jennifer Joseph received a Diploma of Arts and Crafts from Melbourne Teachers College in 1971 and has been exhibiting since 1986. She studied fine arts part-time at RMIT from 1977 to 1979. Despite her years of study, Joseph considers herself essentially self-taught. She realised early on that her development was to be found through a dedicated studio practice. Jennifer Joseph currently lives and works in Melbourne.

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