Christine Dean

Bio

Christine Dean (b. 1963) is an artist, educator and writer who has been exhibiting since 1988. From the early 1990s she has exhibited in many LGBTQI+ exhibitions including Juice, Art Gallery of New South Wales (1997); The Oscar Wilde Reading Group, Raw Nerve Gallery (1998); Bent Western, Blacktown Arts Centre (2008); From Straight to Gay and Back Again, Alaska Projects (2015); Can’t Touch This, Verge Gallery (2017); 40 Years of Queer Art, Comber Street Studios (2018); The Party, UNSW Galleries; and Braving Time, NAS Gallery (both 2023). In 1986 Christine completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney majoring in Fine Arts, a Diploma in Secondary Art Education from Sydney Teachers College in 1989, a Graduate Diploma in Painting, Sydney College of the Arts in 1990, a Masters of Fine Arts, University of NSW in 2003 and a PhD from the University of NSW in 2010. In 2000 she was awarded a Pollock-Krasner fellowship and in 2001 undertook a residency at the 18th Street Arts Centre, Los Angeles, as part of an Australia Council research grant. The focus of Dean’s art practice has been developing a relationship between abstraction and text. Much of the text included is both poetic and political. The painting Drag Queen (2015) belongs to a series produced while living in Kings Cross. The text included is a quote from an interview conducted by Roberta Perkins that was published in her 1983 book The Drag Queen Scene and the shimmering colours and design of the painting visualise the decor of nightclubs from the era.

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