Colin Holt: a survey

Colin Holt: a survey will showcase the four  decades of artwork created by celebrated Darwin local Colin Holt, who is best known for his quirky and abstract paintings and prints.

CDU Art Gallery Acting Curator  Kellie Joswig said Mr  Holt had led a hectic life in Darwin’s vibrant art and music scene, creating a large range of varied works.“Featuring almost 90  works from his career in Northern Australia, the exhibition includes abstract paintings from land and seascapes, to cowboys on horses imagined from early frontier days, commissioned posters, and a series of not-so-flattering portraits of NT Chief Ministers,” Ms Joswig said.  

Ms Joswig said the exhibition would give visitors a glimpse into the fascinating life of a talented, yet underrecognised visual  artist, and his keen and cynical interest in local politics.
“Often labelled as an abstract expressionist, he creates layered compositions of paint that reference memory as a visual language,” she said. “The exhibition also will feature his screen-printing and large-format portraiture, and include posters advertising music gigs and Top End tourism alongside a series of cheeky portraits created in 2008 entitled 30 years of Chief Ministers.” 

Colin Holt arrived in Darwin in 1977 and studied Fine Arts at the Darwin Community College, CDU’s predecessor institution. In the early 1980s, he lived in Cairns, at Darwin River and on Bathurst Island, before starting a screen-printing studio at Wishart Siding . During the early 1990s, he ran poster and fabric printmaking workshops at Tiwi Designs on Bathurst Island, returning often to assist with the artists’ printmaking activities.

He has worked as a painter, screen printer, furniture maker, muralist, market gardener and as an accomplished musician. His work is represented in regional and national public and private collections in Australia. Many artworks that will feature in the exhibition are on loan from private collections in Darwin, Alice Springs and Yirrkala.

Colin Holt: a survey  will run from 19 October 2017 – 17 February 2018 at the Charles Darwin University Art Gallery
 

Image: Colin Holt, Untitled (Fitzroy Crossing), 2004, red pindan sand, PVA, bitumen, acrylic and lime on metal washing machine lid, 41.5 h x 47 w cm, Charles Darwin University Art Collection, CDU2415