Dr Peter Alwast

Peter Alwast has held over 18 solo exhibitions and has been shown in group exhibitions at the Tate Modern (London), Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania), the Greater Taipei Biennial, the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney), GOMA - Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, among others. His work is held in public and private collections in Australia and the United States. Alwast's practice employs a range of media including painting, video, computer graphics and drawing. In 1999, Alwast was awarded a Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship and since completing his Masters in Fine Art degree from the Parsons School of Design, New School University, New York in 2001, he has exhibited  nationally and internationally. In 2013 Alwast undertook a residency and solo exhibition at Videotage in Hong Kong . In 2011 he created a solo exhibition Future Perfect at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and his work was seen in the group exhibition Experimenta Utopia Now travelling to MONA, Tasmania as well as Selectively Revealed at the Aram Art Gallery, Seoul, South Korea.  In 2010 Alwast's video animation work 'Everything' received an honourable mention in Update III, at the Liedts Meesen foundation in Ghent, Belgium.  His drawing work ‘Trees, Waterfall, Back’ won the Jacaranda drawing award in Grafton Regional Gallery. In 2008 he was the inaugural recipient of The New Media Art Award, hosted by The Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia.  His painting works have been included in the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize and The Mosman Art Award. 

PhD UNSW Art and Design, Sydney 2019, MFA (Painting) New School University, Parsons School of Design, New York 2001, Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons First Class) QUT, Brisbane 1997

Theoretical research includes the politics of aesthetics, post-structuralism, new materialism, formalism and the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques and Ranciere.

Studio research is based on relations and discordances between paintings, prints and animated video works that critique and expose neo-liberal institutions, social fragmentation and precarious constructions of community.