Victorian sculptor, Cliff Burtt, has consistently exhibited over the last four decades since graduating from RMIT in 1983. He has executed a number of substantial public art commissions, with his smaller scale works being collected across Australia, Europe and the USA. While proficient in a range of media, his favoured medium is steel, manipulated by cold forming and welding.
Australian Galleries Melbourne is delighted to present Cliff Burtt’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. This curated exhibition includes a selection of new free-standing and wall-mounted steel sculptures, drawing upon the artist’s interest in exploring the aesthetics and world view of instruments used for surveying, modelling and marking time and space.
‘Several pieces in this exhibition directly reference the kinds of instruments first employed to survey and map lands by the expanding colonial powers. Reckoning of position was essential to this purpose.
In more recent times, we have started to engage with a reckoning of a different nature, that of acknowledging the history and the conflicts inherent in that expansion.
We must also contend with contrasting understandings and views of the landscape itself. I have hoped to capture some of the nuances and ironies embedded in these themes within these works.’ – Cliff Burtt, 2023