Yvonne Boag (born 13 August 1954) is an Australian painter and printmaker whose work reflects the many places where she has lived and worked.
Biography and education Boag was born in Glasgow in Scotland, and emigrated with her family to Australia in 1964. They settled in the remote industrial city of Port Pirie where she attended Port Pirie High School. Her art teacher, the ceramicist, Petrus Spronk, encouraged her to apply for entry to the South Australian School of Art in Adelaide. There she specialised in printmaking under Franz Kempf, graduating in 1976. In 1977 she moved to Melbourne where, at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology she was able to work alongside an outstanding generation of printmakers including George Baldessin, Tate Adams and John Loane, along with Neil Leveson at the Victorian (now Australian) Print Workshop.
In 1985, Boag moved to Sydney, where she exhibited with Australian Galleries and taught at the National Art School, Sydney College of the Arts, Western Sydney University and the College of Fine Arts. During the 1990s she conducted annual printmaking workshops at the remote Aboriginal community of Lockhart River in northern Queensland. She also worked and travelled extensively. She was artist-in-residence at the Aberdeen Art Gallery in Scotland, spent five years in Paris (including a residency at the Moya Dyring Studio in the Cité internationale des arts), worked in the Scuola Internazionale di Graphica in Venice, and was awarded the Australia Council's Japan Residency in 1998, having been Asialink's inaugural artist-in-residence in Seoul, South Korea in 1995. Since then she has regularly spent months at a time in South Korea teaching, exhibiting and consulting. She now divides her time between Seoul and Sydney.
Work Living in different cultural contexts has led to the artist's preoccupation with displacement. The work becomes a response to Boag's own response to her new surroundings. Images are reduced to semi-abstract forms that combine areas of colour with line. The results are strong graphic forms which take on the character of signs. The pictures are simultaneously simple and complex. They become conversations between the artist and her context, reflecting the range of responses to being in a foreign place.
Collections Castlemaine Art Museum Geelong Gallery
Selected bibliography Acquisitions 1992, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo Vic, Australia, 1992 ArirangTV, Communicating through shapes, colors and lines in Mokpo, http://www.cultconv.com/yvonneboag/artravel2.html, 2019 Art & Australia, September 2003 Art World, Korea, August 1995 Asian Art in Australia, Bright Influence, in Profile Stories, https://asianartaustralia.wordpress.com, 27 April 2012 Catalogue, 2eme Salon Cimaise, Dinan, France, 1993 Catalogue, Discovery New Asia, Chung Ju Korea, 1993 Chosun Ilbo, South Korea, May 1995 Chung Chong Daily News, Korea, May 1995 Cross, E., Exhibition Review, The Age, 22 February 1989 Directory of Australian Printmakers 1982-1989, Print Council of Australia Douglas B, An Aboriginal exhibition of awakening, https://issuu.com/first_nations_telegraph/docs/an_aboriginal_exhibition_of_awakeni, January 2015 Drury, N., Images 2 Contemporary Australian Painting, Craftsman House, 1994 Exhibition: Yvonne Boag "Strange Associations". IY archives: interview (2013, http://illustrateyourself.com/news/entry/exhibition-yvonne-boag-strange-associations-2015 , 2015 Frost A, The uncanny and Changwon Sculpture Biennale, https://theconversation.com/the-uncanny-and-changwon-sculpture-biennale-66136, 2016 Germaine, Max, Directory of Australian Artists Graven Images in the Promised Land, Art Gallery of South Australia, 1981 Grishin S, Yvonne Boag s Here and There at Nancy Sever Gallery in Canberra a sensual exploration of Korea, http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-life/yvonne-boags-here-and-there-at-nancy-sever-gallery-in-canberra-a-sensual-exploration-of-korea-20160901-gr6e6t.html, September 2016 Grishin, S. (Ed), Australian Printmaking in the 1990s, Craftsman House, 1996 Hankook Ilbo, South Korea, June 1995 Kang Chul-Son's Cultural Journey to Australia, Korean Broadcasting Service, broadcast in June, 1996 Korean Eyesed Exhibition Review (in Korean), http://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0000232240 Korean Times, Korea, May 1995 Korean-eyesed, Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul Indesign, March 2003-12-08 MBC, Radio Interview, 1800hrs, 27 May 1995 McGillick, Paul, A voice of her own, Art & Australia Spring Vol 41 No. 1 2003 New Art 3, Craftsman House Press 1989 Petit Presse à Poing, Imprint Magazine, Vol 28, No. 1, 1993 Point & Marge, Imprint Magazine, Vol 28, No. 3, 1993 Scottish Painters in Australia Catalogue, Castlemaine Art Museum, Castlemaine Vic, Australia Watson, B., Artist Yvonne Boag finds inspiration in South Korea, The Australian, 3 September 2016, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/artist-yvonne-boag-finds-inspiration-in-south-korea/news-story/ec23b523a38a48e57cbf8de1cc71b1d6
References
External links Personal web site National National Library of Australia TROVE profile Design & Art Australia Online profile Australian Centre for Australian Art, Prints + Printmaking profile Asia Asia Art Archive profile