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We join the rest of the art community in mourning the passing of our friend, Melbourne artist John Nixon. If anyone exemplified the imperative ‘stick to your knitting’, it was Nixon. For decades, he has pursued a practice focused on reworking a set of tropes derived from the historical avantgarde, bridging geometric abstraction and the readymade. Deceptively simple, his work could be at once idealistic and materialistic, hermetic and worldly, removed and engaged. It was spiritual yet designy, doctrinaire yet joyous. Artist Mike Parr once characterised it as ‘beleaguered transcendence’. In staying on message as the world turned, Nixon’s project continued to make new sense in new times, finding new champions and acolytes. His work—and his example of how to live and operate as an artist—inspired others, including our own Julian Dashper. It remains a compass point.
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[IMAGE: John Nixon: EP+OW, City Gallery Wellington, 1997.]
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