Wendy Sharpe

Wendy Sharpe undertook art studies in Sydney between 1978 and 1984 and held her first solo exhibition in 1985. She won the Sulman Prize the following year, and was also awarded a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, and a Marten Bequest travelling scholarship from the Australia Council. In 1989 she won the Mercedes Benz Scholarship to travel to the Middle East and Italy. Between 1990 and 1999 she won the Waverley Art Prize, the Robert Le Gay Brereton Drawing Prize, the Portia Geach Memorial Award, the Kedumba Drawing Award and the Bathurst Art Prize; and in 1996 her Self portrait as Diana of Erskineville – executed in her characteristically carnivalesque style – became the first self portrait by a woman artist to win the Archibald Prize. Sharpe won the Portia Geach again in 2003 and gained another residency at the Cité in 2006. In 1998–1999, she created eight enormous murals depicting the life of pioneering swimmer and performer Annette Kellerman for the City of Sydney's Cook and Phillip Park Aquatic Centre; and she was appointed an Official War Artist attached to the Australian Army History Unit in Dili, East Timor. Renowned for her richly-coloured and variously-perspectived works, Sharpe is particularly interested in subjects such as the voluptuous forms of dancers, acrobats, drag artists and burlesque performers, and the effects of stage, street and domestic lighting. A major retrospective exhibition, Wendy Sharpe: The imagined life, was presented at the SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney, in 2011.

Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2004. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
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