Jack Lanagan Dunbar’s work explores the tension between materiality and time with an eye on history, whimsy, archaeology, the classical, Romantisicm, humour and tragedy.

He works across media, typically incorporating elements of drawing, painting, printing, sculpture and photography in his pieces and often imposing them upon one another. Copper, steel, timber, paper and clay form the bulk of Lanagan Dunbar’s raw materials and it is onto and into these that he produces his marks, sometimes imposing them himself, while at others stepping back to allow the material to speak for itself.

Individual pieces are best described as ‘vignettes’—brief but intense expressions of ideas drawn from contemporary, historical and mythological sources. When shown together the vignettes produce more complex sequences or chains of meaning that vary in character and potency from viewer to viewer; unique, flickering odes to the ancient, pan-cultural tradition of storytelling.

Jack Lanagan Dunbar has shown extensively in Australia and abroad, held positions at the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of Sydney, was the recipient of the 2016 Redlands Art Prize (emerging artist) and the 2019 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship.