Jon Cattapan

Jon Cattapan was born in 1956 in Melbourne[1] to Italian parents.[2] Cattapan's family emigrated from Castelfranco in the Veneto region of Italy after World War II.[2] Cattapan was first taught to draw aged six by an older cousin on a trip to Italy.[2]

Cattapan's family initially lived in the inner city suburb of Carlton, known as Melbourne's Little Italy, before moving to the suburb of Highett[2] where Cattapan spent the majority of his childhood and young adult life.

Cattapan initially studied computer science for a year at RMIT[2] before instead deciding to pursue art and enrolling in a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting at RMIT.[3][2] He graduated from RMIT in 1977.[3] Cattapan went on to complete a Masters of Arts by research in 1992 at Monash University.[4]

Cattapan had his first group exhibition Crisis Drawings in 1978 with artist Peter Ellis at the RMIT faculty gallery[3] and his first solo exhibition Paintings, Constructions and Works on Paper at Realities Gallery in 1983.[3]

Cattapan initially intended to complete postgraduate study in filmmaking after transferring from computer science to RMIT's School of Art however has stated this never happened "because I got right into the painting".[3]

From 1989 until 1991 Cattapan lived in the United States of America[5] having a residencies at the Australia Council's Greene Street studio in Manhattan[5] and at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.[3] Chris McCauliffe has stated that "Cattapan's time in New York was a turning point, both personally and professionally"[3] and further described Cattapan's work at this time as "disjointed and emotional".[3]

An exhibition of Cattapan's work made between 1990 and 1991 titled 365 Days was shown in 1992 at Realities gallery in Toorak, Melbourne and Bellas gallery in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.[6] In the corresponding exhibition catalogue Cattapan's artworks are described; "brief moments in a modern metropolis are captured in small detail only to be displaced amongst a melange of information... there is constant movement across the boundaries of figuration and abstraction".[6]

After returning from America, Cattapan completed several major works including The Melbourne Panels[7] and Possible Histories.[8] Cattapan also states that during this period he undertook several overseas artist residencies including a residency as a visiting artist at Hongik University in Korea, a residency in Venice at the Venice printmaking studio.[9]

In 2008, Cattapan served as Australia's 63rd war artist, being deployed to Timor-Leste on a peacekeeping mission with the Australian Army.[10][11][12] Cattapan has described his title as a war artist as overly dramatic given the relative stability of Timor-Leste however has also stated that he feels privileged to have been a war artist and that "the experience opened up a very rich and meaningful artistic journey for me".[13]

In 2009, the ABC aired a documentary following Cattapan's journey to Timor-Leste and the subsequent influence on his artistic process.[14]

Cattapan was the recipient of the Bulgari Art Award in 2013.[10] The award, a partnership between Bulgari and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was bestowed upon Cattapan for his artwork titled Imagine a Raft (Hard Rubbish 4 + 5). As part of the award, the gallery purchased the artwork for $50,000 AUD and Cattapan was awarded and additional $30,000 AUD to travel to Italy to complete an artist's residency, which he intended to complete in Rome and Venice.[15]

Still influenced by his time as a war artist, Cattapan collaborated with fellow war artists Charles Green and Lyndell Brown on collaborative shows such as Spook Country.[16] Dan Rule of The Age described these collaborations overall as discussing and resonating with the repercussions of conflict, especially the notion of accountability in relation to conflict occurring overseas.[16]

In 2016 Cattapan was selected to feature in the Melbourne Art Trams project.[17] As part of the project a Melbourne tram was wrapped in an artistic design of Cattapan's.[17]

Cattapan was the subject of the 2016 Archibald Prize finalist Benjamin Aitken's work Portrait of my mentor (Jon Cattapan and self).[18] Aitken stated that Cattapan had "become something of a mentor" and that the two artists have a "unique relationship" given their difference in tertiary education.[18] The two artists subsequently collaborated in 2018 on a series of ten paintings entitled Circling which exhibited at the La Trobe Art Institute[19]

As of 2020 he exhibits with Station Gallery in Melbourne,[20] Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney[10] and Milani Gallery in Brisbane.[21]

Cattapan started his academic career as a lecturer in painting, drawing and printmaking at his Alma mater, RMIT, in 1982, before becoming a lecturer in painting in 1987 and leaving the university in 1989. Between 1992 and 1994 Cattapan was lecturer in foundation studies at the Australian National University before becoming a senior lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts.[3] Cattapan became an associate professor at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2007[3] and is currently a professor in visual art within the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Fine Art and Music at the Victorian College of the Arts[4] after the two institutions merged in 2007.[22] Cattapan also previously held the position of director at the Victorian College of the Arts.[2]

In the late 1970s Cattapan became involved with the punk rock scene in St Kilda.[3] As Cattapan notes:

You had one café that everyone went to. The Galleon, upstairs in Acland Street. And if you went there, you'd be guaranteed to bump into half a dozen people from different sorts of art forms. So by osmosis, I suppose, you started to take on other people's ideas and predilections.[3]

This involvement with the punk rock scene led Cattapan to begin to explore notions of geographical and social territories.[3] McAuliffe has also noted that the punk rock scene legitimized Cattapan's more raw and emotional early style.[3]

Connections have been drawn between Cattapan's early works, with their exploration of night-life and prostitution in St Kilda, and the work of artist Albert Tucker who explored similar themes in his Images of Modern Evil series, also in St Kilda.[3]

Cattapan's work has been described as taking on a data-scape style and as a crossover between data-visualisation and the visual landscape[24] and he has been noted for his interest in the post-modern city. Artist and critic John Conomos is quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying "His swirling atmospherics suggest the romanticism of Turner's landscapes and Whistler's nocturnes".[25]

Several of Cattapan's notable city-scape works are held in the collections of major Australian galleries including Possible Histories which is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia[8] and The Melbourne Panels, held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria[7]

During his deployment as the 63rd Australian war artist, Cattapan began to experiment with night-vision equipment. In his words:

Using an amalgam of local and global environments to test ways of picturing gatherings or mapping territories has been at the heart of my practice. In Timor-Leste, that was brought to bear through the lens of the night-vision monocle I was given.[13]

The use of night-vision equipment was a continuation of Cattapan's previous interest in the nocturnal and in the use of digital technologies in his work process.[26] Cattapan's work during and after his deployment conveyed notions of surrealism and voyeurism.[26] By using mono-print Drawings in conjunction with digital photographs, Cattapan's Carbon group create an imaginative retelling of events that he witnessed in Timor-Leste.[26] Cattapan also states that it was his intention to depict the Australian army's relations with the local Timorese people.[27]

In 2014, art critic Sasha Grishin described Cattapan's work as "accessible, but simultaneously also mysterious and hinting at a different level of existence".[28] Grishin has also noted Cattapan's interest in information systems and surveillance technology.[28]After returning from Timor-Leste, Cattapan began to experiment with dripping paint in the background of his works.[29] Eyeline magazine interpreted this as a reaction to the instability of the 21st century and offered multiple different suggestions of the purpose and meaning of this change in technique.[29]