Imants Tillers (b. 1950) is a visual artist, writer and curator based in Cooma, New South Wales. His signature canvasboard paintings are informed by the contemporary diasporic experience, and often respond to issues of migration, identity, place and displacement. He graduated from the University of Sydney with an Honours degree in architecture, and has exhibited widely since the late 1960s, representing Australia at important international exhibitions including the
Sao Paulo Bienal in 1975,
Documenta 7 in 1982, and the 42nd
Venice Biennale in 1986. Tillers has won the Gold, Silver and Bronze prizes at the
Osaka Triennale (1993-2001), and in 2003 he won the inaugural
Beijing International Art Biennale Prize for Excellence. In 2018 the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga presented a large-scale retrospective exhibition of his work,
Journey to Nowhere, which was was accompanied by a catalogue co-published by Power Publications at the University of Sydney, and a feature-length documentary on his life and work,
Thrown into the World. In 2019 Tillers will join the Purvītis Prize Panel of Judges alongside Klaus Biesenbach, Ursula Krinzinger, Milena Orlova, Galila Barzilaï-Hollander and Udo Kittelmann.
Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2004. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
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