John Meade is one of Australia’s leading sculptors. Scaled from the corporeal to the architectural, Meade’s practice metabolises traces of the encountered and imagined material world to create fundamentally new forms. He produces refined sculptures that retain a sense of uncanny self-containment, each an alluring, autonomous object that bears its own set of associations and congruences. Citing philosophy, art history, queer theory and psychoanalysis, Meade’s spatially resonant work evades pre-determination or fore-gone conceptualisation. His formal gestures and material combinations are characterised by an assertiveness devised through a careful mediation of the organic and the automated, the vernacular and the designed. Intuitive juxtapositions give rise to a seductive interplay between hard and soft, matte and gloss, found and engineered. Through a superior invocation of colour and adroit understanding of the perceptual relationship between an object’s surface, weight, and density, Meade produces sculptures that claim their space with a formidable presence.

Born in Ballarat, VIC in 1956, John Meade lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. Since receiving his BFA from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in 1994, Meade has exhibited regularly throughout Australia and overseas. He was the recipient of the prestigious Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, through which he completed a Master of Arts (Studio Art) at New York University (NYU) in 2004. Receiving multiple awards and grants over his career, Meade has undertaken residencies in Berlin, Germany in 2019 and New Delhi, India in 1999. In 2018, Meade completed his PhD at Monash University in Melbourne. He is an Honorary Fellow in Art at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music (VCA), University of Melbourne.

John Meade’s work has been institutionally recognised throughout Australia, presenting solo projects at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA); Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW); Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA); Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), among others. His work has been included in biennial exhibitions including the TarraWarra Biennial (2018); Adelaide Biennial of Australia Art (2006), in addition to major curated shows at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) and Heide Museum of Modern Art.

Additionally, Meade is renowned throughout Australia for his public sculpture. He has been commissioned by a range of civic, cultural and private bodies to produce large-scale permanent installations, including The National Bank (Docklands, VIC); Monash University (Clayton, VIC); Heide Museum of Modern Art (Melbourne, VIC); Abian Tower (Brisbane, QLD), among others. His work is held in prominent collections including the National Gallery of Victoria; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; Geelong Gallery; Art Gallery of Ballarat; McClelland; Heide Museum of Modern Art; Shepparton Art Museum, among other private and public collections across Australia and overseas.