Julian Dashper

Born 1960, Auckland (NZ). Died 2009, Auckland (NZ)

Curator Robert Leonard has described Julian Dashper as a “self-consciously art-historical artist” whose works were “always in dialogue with other artists and art history.” This was true across Dashper’s entire career, spanning the expressionist canvas paintings that drew attention to him in the 1980s, to the myriad interventions in print and physical spaces that pit the artist in conversation with New Zealand’s art history—and both with the rest of the world.

Dashper graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland in 1982 and has exhibited widely at a domestic and international level. His work was included in After McCahon: Some Configurations in Recent Art, Auckland City Art Gallery (1989); Headlands: Thinking Through New Zealand Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, Sydney (1992); and Stop Making Sense, City Gallery, Wellington (1995). Significant solo exhibitions include The Big Bang Theory, Artspace, Auckland (1993); The Twist, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (1999); and Midwestern Unlike You and Me: New Zealand’s Julian Dashper, Sioux City Art Centre (2005) His work has been the subject of a number of major New Zealand retrospectives, including Julian Dashper & Friends, City Gallery, Wellington (2015); and Julian Dashper: Professional Practice,Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (2010). In 2001 he was awarded a Senior Fulbright Scholarship to visit the University of Nebraska and Chinati Foundation in Marfa as an artist-in-residence. Julian Dashper died in Auckland on 30 July 2009.