New Works
7 June - 24 June 2006

John Buckley Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of new work by the Australian sculptor Peter D. Cole

Born in Gawler, South Australia in 1947, Cole now lives and works near Kyneton in central Victoria. Past work has often abstracted features of those rural landscapes, transforming them in a way that references the modernist aesthetic  - particularly of the fifties and sixties.

As always, Cole uses steel, aluminium and brass to create precisely fabricated geometric shapes, painted in his signature bright, primary colours. These are then arranged into two or three-dimensional compositions which are either freestanding or wall-mounted. A system of connecting rods support the free-standing works at deliciously rakish angles, setting up what might be termed a precarious harmony of shapes to form abstract three-dimensional geometric compositions.

In 1968 Cole completed a diploma in Fine Art (Sculpture) at the South Australian School of Art, and was awarded the HP Gill Medal and the Contemporary Art Society Drawing Prize. Between 1973 and 1992 he was the lecturer in charge of sculpture at the Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne. Cole has exhibited widely both here in Australia and Internationally since the early seventies.

Selected Exhibitions: Carpenter Centre for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, USA in 1995; Mildura Sculpture Triennial 1970, 1985 and 1988; Australian Sculpture Triennial, Melbourne 1981, 1984 and 1990.

Selected Major public sculpture commissions: Foundation Park, The Rocks, Sydney for which Cole was awarded the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects Award for Merit in 1995 and the Australian National Heritage Trust Award 1996; Chiefly Tower, Sydney; Thredbo Alpine Village; Brisbane International Airport; Sydney Casino; BHP and Transfield Corporations.