Current releases
GEOFF DIXON - PORTRAITS OF US
Year: 2022
Classification: Exempt - Ronin Recommends: PG
Runtime: 82 min
Produced In: New Zealand
Directed By: Glenis Giles, Clare O'Leary
Produced By: Glenis Giles, Clare O'Leary
Language: English
Geoff Dixon's art reflects his vision for our future unless we take immediate action – he worked as a conservationist long before the word became part of our everyday vocabulary.
His paintings are rich with colour, commentary, and a challenge to all of us to wake up and think about the future of our wildlife, our flora and fauna, our country and our planet.
New Zealand-born and now living and working in Australia, in north Queensland, Geoff grew up and found/discovered his sexuality in the conservative Christchurch of the early seventies. The film introduces us to the people who influenced him and who believed in him over the years. We find out about his travels, his ups and downs, what led to his strong sense of the environment and why the symbols of bird life have come to inhabit his paintings.
Geoff's work celebrates the birds we have around us, as well as those that are on the verge of extinction in Australasia, and reflects on the state of our ecology. He says that the paintings are also 'portraits of us'.
The film observes Geoff at work in his studio in Cairns, Queensland, and in the peaceful sanctuary of his own garden and the awe-inspiring beauty of the rainforest and Australian and New Zealand landscapes.
The film also explores his close relationship over many years with the late Australian Indigenous artist, Arone Meeks.
"My work developed over the past ten years has focused particularly on endangered bird species with an over-riding theme of technology relating to clichés of science fiction and space travel as developed in the 1950s when I was a child.
With an intensifying global anxiety over accelerating climatic and environmental changes I consider the ornithological metaphor both a comment on survival/extinction and a holistic 'human' self-portrait, while the sci-fi references relate to the concept of perception versus reality in human design". Geoff Dixon
VIEW TRAILER HERE: vimeo.com/811101768
Directors: Clare O'Leary & Glenis Giles
Executive Producer: Penney Moir
Producers: Glenis Giles & Clare O'Leary
Director of Photography: Russell Milledge
Editor: Amanda Mulderry
Composers: Plan 9 (Janet Roddick, David Donaldson, Steve Roach)
A production of GoGo Media Aotearoa
Geoff Dixon – Artist
Geoff Dixon was born in Southland and grew up in Nelson. He studied graphic design at Christchurch Polytechnic in the mid-1970s and has exhibited widely since. He was the 1997 Art Foundation's Artist in Residence in Southland, Invercargill (1996-97), the Centre of Contemporary Art in Cairns (2000) and the Art Centre of Christchurch's Artist in Residence, Christchurch Art Centre (2007).
He currently lives and works in Cairns, Queensland, and now divides his time between Australia and New Zealand.
Geoff started exhibiting when he was a student at Canterbury's Christchurch Polytechnic in the 1970s. After travelling in Africa and Papua New Guinea he moved to Sydney. He later moved to Cairns to live with his partner, Aboriginal artist Arone Meeks, whose work is also exhibited in national and international exhibitions.
Collections
Geoff's work is held in Artbank Australia, Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch Polytechnic, George Patterson, James Wallace Arts Trust, Manawatū Art Gallery, Southland Museum and Art Gallery, Wingnut Films, Mike Cole, and many other private collections in New Zealand, Australia and Europe.
Geoff is represented by Bowen Galleries, Wellington. bowengalleries.nz/dixon/
Related files
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