Alex Miller

Alex Miller (b. 1936), novelist, was born in London to an Irish mother and Scottish father. He left school at 15 and worked as a farm labourer before emigrating to Australia, alone, at the age of 17. After working as an itinerant stockman in Queensland he moved to Victoria, taking a degree in History and English at the University of Melbourne in 1965. He later taught writing at Brunswick Technical School and worked as a public servant in Canberra. His earliest success as a writer came with the publication of short stories and the production of several of his plays. In 1993 his third novel, The Ancestor Game, received the Miles Franklin Award. He received a second Miles Franklin Award in 2003 for his sixth novel, Journey to the Stone Country.

Rick Amor is a Victorian-based painter, printmaker and sculptor. After studying in Melbourne he produced a series of political cartoons before developing an individual, painterly style. After 1983 he began to paint more personal and emotionally charged works, often incorporating a haunting solitary figure. Some of his paintings of suburban and inner Melbourne now number amongst the defining images of the city. During the 1990s Amor was awarded several art residencies and worked in Barcelona, New York and London. In 1999, as Australia's first official war artist since Vietnam, he travelled to East Timor to document the devastated land and the reconstruction efforts of peacekeepers. Represented in most major Australian galleries, Amor is a highly regarded portrait painter and a regular exhibitor in the Archibald Prize.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2005
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Rick Amor/Copyright Agency, 2024