Tony Clark is best known for his moody, romantic landscape paintings that both reference and react against the Old Masters. Clark emerged as an artist in late-1970s Melbourne, at a time when the DIY aesthetic prevailed. Self-taught as an artist, with an academic background in art history, Clark was associated with the artists and musicians centred around the St Kilda scene – in particular, Nick Cave and Howard Arkley. Defiantly, and with a punk spirit, Clark pursued landscape painting, despite it being out of fashion at the time. Since then, Clark has devoted himself to interrogating the genre of landscape painting, deliberately subverting hierarchies between fine art and the decorative arts to create his own unique form of ‘punk classicism’.

In a career spanning over four decades, Clark has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally. In 2024 he presented Unsculpted, a significant solo exhibition at Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne. In 2021, Clark presented Nilotic, a solo exhibition at STATION, Sydney. A major retrospective of his work, Tony Clark: Public and Private Paintings 1982 – 1998, was presented at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne in 1998. In 1994 he won the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize with a work that was made with just four colours: light blue, light pink, raw sienna, and black, a palette which he has continued to use throughout his career. In 1992, he presented in Documenta IX in Kassel, Germany. The artist’s work is included in numerous public collections in Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Ephemerality is all Very Well: Portraits of Rowland S. Howard

Tony Clark & Lyndal Walker

Ephemerality is all Very Well: Portraits of Rowland S. Howard

Myriorama

Tony Clark

Myriorama