
Julian Hooper
Julian Hooper is becoming increasingly well known for his highly individual paintings, which draw upon a store of personal memory and imagery.
While moving close to contemporary abstraction and traditional painting territories, Julian's work is unique and often surprising. Hoopers images evolve gradually in the process of painting. By adding, editing, over-painting and erasing, forms travel away from their initial meaning and start to refer to something else. This contributes an expressive or surreal quality to the work. While he develops a relationship to the work as it evolves, the viewer finds the finished work unfolding in a similar way.
Julian is based in Auckland, New Zealand. He is of mixed English, Hungarian and Tongan heritage. Julian received a BFA from the University of Auckland 1989, and an MFA from RMIT, Melbourne in 1999. In 2000 he took up a six-month residency position at ISCP New York and continued living in New York for three years. He has exhibited extensively in New Zealand and Australia since 1990. Recently his work was included in Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show, at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. Hooper’s work is in major museum collections throughout New Zealand and Australia, including Auckland City Art Gallery, the Chartwell Collection, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and the University of Auckland and Queensland Art Gallery.