Angela Cavalieri

Cavalieri's parents migrated from Calabria, Italy, to Australia in the post-war period. She studied printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts from 1981 to 1983.

Cavalieri continued to exhibit in solo and group exhibitions since 1984.

She has been awarded several prizes and has undertaken a number of artist residencies in Europe and Australia. Her work is held in many public and private collections throughout Australia, notably Australian National Gallery, The National Gallery of Victoria,[1] State Library of Queensland, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne and State Library of Victoria. She is also represented in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland.

Text, language and the transformative nature of culture are recurring themes in Cavalieri's art practice, referencing in particular her Italian heritage. Her work has been described as "visually seductive, monumental in their proportions and immediate in their impact" by the art historian Sasha Grishin.[2]

She surveys the art of writing and storytelling in a visual form in a series of monumental, hand-rolled linocuts on canvas as well as producing small-scale artist's books.[3]

Passages from Dante, Petrarch, Italo Calvino and the influences of Italian artists such as Piero della Francesca, Giotto and Piranesi are referenced in her work. The music of the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) also provided Cavalieri with inspiration, as a result of an Arts Centre Melbourne commission to produce a work about an opera in 2011, the State Library of Victoria's Creative Fellowship (2012-2013)[4] and a residency at La Scuola Internazionale di Grafica Residency in Venice (2015), exploring the city where Monteverdi lived in the last decades of his life.[5][6]

• National Gallery of Victoria Trustee Award, 1981
• Desiderius Orban Youth Award, Australia Council, 1984
• Mitchell Endowment Acquisition Prize, National Gallery of Victoria, 1985
• Overseas Studio Grant Paretaio, Italy, Australia Council, 1986
• Project Grant, Visual Arts/Craft Board, Australia Council, 1990
• Sutherland Acquisitive Prize, Sutherland Shire Council, NSW, 1999
• Shell Fremantle Print Award, Western Australia, 1999
• Conrad Jupiter Acquisitive Prize, Gold Coast City Gallery, Queensland, 2000
• Grand Prize, The Silk Cut Print Award, 2000
• Artists-in-Schools Program Grant, Arts Victoria, 2001
• Australia Council Residency, The British School at Rome, Italy, 2003
• Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Travel Sponsorship for Academici at The British School at Rome, Italy 2005
• Edith Cowen University Residency, Perth, Wester Australia, 2005
• RMIT Summer Residency and exhibition at Project Space/Spare Room, 2007-8
• Dreams of Art Spaces Collected, Projektraum Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin, Germany, 2007
• Piramidon, Centre for Contemporary Art, Residency, Barcelona, Spain, 2008
• Geelong Print Prize Acquisitive Award, 2009
• Australia Council Studio Grant for Barcelona, Spain, 2010
• State Library Victoria Creative Fellowship, Melbourne, Victoria, 2012
• La Scuola Internazionale di Grafica Residency, Venice, Italy, 2015