Amber Wallis

Great Barrier Island Open Doorway

2023 Oil on Linen 1300 mm x 1500 mm

Conceptually I like to blur the lines between domesticity and erotic fantasy, interior space and landscape while allowing ambiguous or ghostly figures to also occupy space. I am interested in navigating my experience of being a woman and a single mother and the psychological space of architecture. I have been interested in the 1970s handmade house movement which references my early childhood living within an alternative utopian turned dystopian community in New Zealand. I’m interested in architecture as both a space of freedom and containment from a feminist lens. Amber Wallis is represented by Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne. Amber Wallis graduated from the Canberra School of Art (BA Visual Art 2002) and The Victorian College of The Arts (Master of Visual Arts 2008). She has held solo exhibitions since 2009 in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne and has been included in group exhibitions since 2009 in Australia, the USA and the UK. Wallis has been awarded the Brett Whiteley Travelling Arts Scholarship, AGNSW (2008) and the Woolumbin Art Award, Tweed Regional Art Gallery (2022). She has undertaken residencies at Tweed Regional Gallery as the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence (2023), Driving Creek Pottery, New Zealand (2023), Cité internationale des arts Residency, Paris, France (2009). Wallis has been a finalist in the Evelyn Chapman Art Award (2022), Arthur Guy Memorial Prize (2019), the Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2019, 2018), Mosman Art Prize (2018). She has held solo presentations at Sydney Contemporary (2022) and Melbourne Art Fair (2012, 2018) and has been profiled in Australian Art Collector, Artist Profile and was most recently in Thames and Hudson's Australian Abstract by Amber Creswell-Bell (2022). She was recently in group shows at Arusha Gallery (UK), Sade Gallery (LA) and Gruin Gallery (LA). Her work is held in the collections of Artbank, Arthur Roe and private collections in Australia, Europe and North America. She is represented by Jan Murphy Gallery Brisbane and Nicholas Thompson Gallery Melbourne, Australia. 2024 includes a solo with Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne in July and Art Byron in October.