David Eastwood
solo exhibition
19 September – 17 October 2026
view here
David Eastwood
Beckon
acrylic on polyester 46×51cm
David Eastwood’s paintings and drawings are characterised by a hyperreal, collage-like aesthetic in which space is composed of multiple fragments that form a complex whole. Such an approach to pictorial space is evident in his early trompe l’oeil images, as well as in more recent interiors populated by disparate and often surprising objects, contradicting conventional notions of time and space. One line of inquiry in his work involves an investigation of the studio as a place of immersion and invention, informed by the museum practice of posthumously reconstructing the studios of artists such as Francis Bacon and Giorgio Morandi. He also has a continuing interest in model-making as a tool to generate hypothetical objects, producing both handmade models and 3D digital models to inform his imaging practices.
David exhibits regularly at Robin Gibson Gallery in Sydney where he is based, and has exhibited in numerous art prizes including the Dobell Drawing Prize, Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Hazelhurst Art Award, Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Metro Art Award and Redlands Westpac Art Prize. He was awarded COFA’s first University Medal in 1997, as well as the Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award, an Australia Council Paris studio residency, and the Kedumba Drawing Award. He is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Higher Degree Research at UNSW Art & Design.
David Eastwood
Born in Sydney, Australia. Currently lives and works in Sydney
Education
2013-18 Doctor of Philosophy, UNSW Art & Design
1997-1999 Master of Fine Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales
1993-96 Bachelor of Fine Arts with First Class Honours & University Medal, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales
Solo exhibitions
2026 Vestiges, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2023 False Monuments, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2021 Artificial Artefacts, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2019 Vue d’atelier, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2018 The Posthumous Studio, UNSW Galleries, Sydney
2016 The Atemporal Mirror, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2013 Pseudo Studio, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2011 Decoy Décor, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2011 Showroom, Australian Institute of Architects, Sydney
2009 Ulterior/Interior, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2007 Mise en scène, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2005 Marks, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2003 Split, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2001 Crumple, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
1999 Tilt, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
1999 COFA Exhibition Space, Sydney
Awards
2025 UNSW Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Higher Degree Research Leadership
2025 UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture 2025 Award for Excellence in Research Leadership
2025 UNSW School of Art and Design School Research Grants – Research Output Funding
2021 Highly Commended, Hazelhurst Art Award: Art on Paper
2019 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Higher Degree Research, UNSW Art & Design
2019 Dean’s Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis, Graduate Research School, UNSW
2013-2017 University Postgraduate Award, UNSW (Scholarship) UNSW Research Excellence Award (Scholarship)
2010 Kedumba Drawing Award
2008-09 Visual Arts Board Skills and Arts Development Grant: Paris studio residency (three months), Australia Council Studio, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris
2003 Viewers’ Choice Award, Redlands Westpac Art Prize
2001 Commended, Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship
2000 Winner, Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award
1998 Willoughby City Art Prize People’s Choice Award
1998 Highly Commended, Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award
1998 Three month studio residency, UNSW studio, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris
1997-99 Australian Postgraduate Award (Scholarship)
1997 University Medal, University of New South Wales
1997 First Prize, UNSW Union Art Competition
Selected group exhibitions
2026 Lighthouse: Robin Gibson Gallery’s 50th Anniversary Exhibition, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney.
2026 Tableau Vivant, Draw Space, Sydney. Curated by Dr David Eastwood and Karen Kriss.
2026 Destination Drawing / From the archives of the International Drawing Research Institute, Draw Space, Sydney.
2024 Salon Des Refuses, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney; The David Roche Foundation, Adelaide; Retford Park, Bowral NSW.
2024 Sir John Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
2024 Vault, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney.
2024 The King’s School Art Prize, The King’s School, Sydney.
2024 Fabrication, Draw Space, Sydney.
2023 Hazelhurst Art Award: Art on Paper, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Gymea
2023 Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Croydon, Sydney
2022 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW (touring)
2022 Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Croydon, Sydney
2022 Hazelhurst Art Award: Art on Paper, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Gymea
2020 Love in the time of COVID-19, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
2019 The Drawing Show, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2019 New Now, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2017 A Working Model of the World, UNSW Galleries, Sydney, and Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York. Curated by Dr Lizzie Muller and Holly Williams.
2017 9 Hours Underground, Sydney opera House Cave, Sydney. Curated by Kate Smith.
2017 Re-Launch, ADspace, Sydney
2016 Small World | Small Wonders, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2016 Wall to Wall, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2015 Salon, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2015 Well Red, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2015 Drawing Now, ADspace, Sydney
2014 (Small) Gems, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2014 Monochrome, Sheffer Gallery, Sydney
2014 For Lease: Reinterpreting Place, Breezeblock, Sydney. Curated by Chloe Wolifson.
2014 The Democracy of Drawing, Airspace Projects, Marrickville, Sydney
2013 Presence and Absence, Wollongong Art Gallery, Wollongong
2013 Drawing Now, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney
2013 The Carpentry of Speculative Things, Alaska Projects, Sydney
2013 Speculative Spaces, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2012 Height x Width, Sheffer Gallery, Sydney
2012 Cut & Paste, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2012 Redlands Westpac Art Prize, National Art School Gallery, Sydney
2011 Paper Trail, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2010 Kedumba Drawing Award, Kedumba Gallery, Wentworth Falls, NSW
2010 Untitled, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2010 Metro Art Award, Metro Gallery, Melbourne
2010 Still Life Treasures, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2009 Small is the New Big, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2008 Drawcard, The National Art School Gallery, Sydney
2008 Metro 5 Art Award, Metro 5 Gallery, Melbourne and Benalla Regional Art Gallery, Victoria
2008 The Young Ones, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2007 Metro 5 Art Award, Metro 5 Gallery, Melbourne and Benalla
2007 Regional Art Gallery, Victoria
2007 Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Croydon, Sydney
2007 Hazelhurst Art Award: Art on Paper, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Gymea, NSW
2007 Christmas Show, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2006 Praxis, Kudos Gallery, Sydney
2006 Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Sydney
2006 Swan Hill Print and Drawing Acquisitive Awards, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Victoria
2006 Visions of a Municipality 2: The Second Exhibition of Lane Cove’s Art Treasures, Lane Cove Council, Sydney
2006 ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award, ABN AMRO Tower, Sydney
2006 Three, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2006 Shelf Life, The Delmar Gallery, Ashfield, Sydney
2006 Summery Christmas Show, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2005 Praxis, Kudos Gallery, Sydney
2005 Hazelhurst Art Award: Art on Paper, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Gymea, NSW
2005 Dobell Drawing Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
2005 Robert Jacks Drawing Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria
2005 The Year In Art, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney
2005 The Alumni Prize, Kudos Gallery, Sydney
2005 From the Stockroom, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2004 Willoughby City Art Prize, Willoughby Civic Centre, Sydney
2004 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney
2003 Praxis, Kudos Gallery, Sydney
2003 Destination Drawing, COFA Exhibition Space, Sydney
2003 Redlands Westpac Art Prize, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney
2003 Still Life, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2003 The Year in Art, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney
2002 Paris Days: The UNSW Studio in Paris, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney
2001 Praxis, Kudos Gallery, Sydney
2001 Preview, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2001 Alumni on Paper, Kudos Gallery, Sydney
2001 Context, Kudos Gallery, Sydney and Watt Space Gallery, Newcastle, Australia
2001 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney
2000 The First Show of the Last Year of the Millennium, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2000 Praxis, Kudos Gallery, Sydney
2000 The Postcard Show, Linden Arts Centre and Gallery, Melbourne
2000 An Appointment with Reality, Sir Hermann Black Gallery, Sydney
2000 Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award, Lane Cove Council Cove
2000 Room, Sydney and Atrium Gallery, ABC Ultimo Centre, Sydney
2000 The Art of Drawing, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2000 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney
2000 Selected Works by Gallery Artists, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
1999 50th Anniversary Mosman Art Prize, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney
1999 The King’s School Art Prize, The King’s School, Sydney
1999 Willoughby City Art Prize, Willoughby Civic Centre, Sydney
1999 MFA Graduates, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney
1998 Uncommon Masters, COFA Exhibition Space, Sydney
1998 Willoughby City Art Prize, Willoughby Civic Centre, Sydney
1998 Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award, Lane Cove Council Cove Room, Sydney
1997 Six Recent Graduates, Crawford Gallery, Sydney
1997 Jenny Birt Award, College of Fine Arts, Sydney
1997 Hatched: Healthway National Graduate Show, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, Australia
1997 UNSW Union Art Competition, University of New South Wales, Sydney
1997 National Tertiary Art Prize, Watt Space Gallery, Newcastle, Australia
1997 Royal Over-Seas League 14th Annual Open Exhibition, Over-Seas House, London and Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland
1996 Salon Des Refuses, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney
1996 Eight is Enough, College of Fine Arts Gallery, Sydney
1996 New Portraiture, College of Fine Arts Gallery, Sydney
1996 Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award, Lane Cove Council Cove Room, Sydney and
1996 Atrium Gallery, ABC Ultimo Centre, Sydney
Collections
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales;
International Drawing Research Institute Archive, University of New South Wales;
Kedumba Collection of Contemporary Australian Drawings;
Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award Collection, Lane Cove Council.
National Museum of Australia, Canberra
Curatorial projects
Tableau Vivant, Draw Space, Sydney, 9-26 April 2026. Curated by David Eastwood and Karen Kriss, Tableau Vivant conceived of drawing as an active and timebased practice rather than a fixed, graphic outcome. The exhibited works emerged from a series of collaborative drawing workshops conducted by members of the UNSW Drawing Research Group, who participated in the creation of large-scale drawings while being tracked and recorded with digital technologies, including video, motion capture, and 3-D scanning. Through varied analogue and digital approaches, the exhibition captured mark making as a durational procedure shaped by spatial relation and trajectories of bodily movement.
Speculative Spaces, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney, 2-26 March 2013.
Speculative Spaces examined the spatial and pictorial investigations of artists working with dioramas and maquettes, fabricated at tabletop scale and subsequently mediated through imaging techniques such as drawing, painting, photography, video, or a combination of these. The exhibition was curated for Robin Gibson Gallery as part of Art Month Sydney 2013.
Academic positions
2022-present Senior Lecturer, UNSW Art & Design, Sydney
2021-present Director HDR, UNSW Art & Design, Sydney
2013-2022 Lecturer, UNSW Art & Design, Sydney
- HDR Coordinator (Stages 2 & 3: Candidacy, Examination & Completion) (2019-2020)
- Acting Program Director, Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) (2016)
2009-2013 Lecturer (fixed-term), Drawing/Painting, COFA, UNSW, Sydney
- Associate Head of Painting, COFA, UNSW, Sydney (2011-2013)
1999-2009 Lecturer (sessional), Drawing/Painting, COFA, UNSW, Sydney
2003-2009 Lecturer (sessional), Painting, National Art School, Sydney
Authored publications
Eastwood, David and Karen Kriss, ‘Facture and the Mutant Material Image’, in Chelsea Lehmann and Elizabeth Pulie (eds.), The Material Image [Online thematic collection], Art+Australia, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, 2026. https://artandaustralia.com/A__A/p429/facture-and-the-mutant-material-image
Kriss, Karen, David Eastwood, Hossein Najafi, Jae Eun Oh, Yuet Kai Chan, and Peter Sharp, ‘Embodied Mark Making: Reframing Motion Capture and Drawing as Disruptive and Collaborative Pedagogy’, in Proceedings of the SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 Educator’s Forum (SA 2025), edited by Stephen N. Spencer, Taku Komura, and Meili Wang, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., New York, 2025.
Eastwood, David, ‘Isolation and the artist’s studio’, Art Monthly, Issue 326, December (Summer) 2020, pp54-59.
Eastwood, David, ‘Artist and Model,’ in A Working Model of the World, website, published in conjunction with the exhibition ‘A Working Model of the World,’ UNSW Galleries, Sydney, and the Sheila C Johnson Design Centre, New York, 2017. http://workingmodeloftheworld.com/Artist-and-Model
Eastwood, David, ‘The Studio as Cloud’ (book chapter) in L. Aceti, P. Thomas, E. Colless, L. Fisher (eds.), Cloud and Molecular Aesthetics, Leonardo/ISAST, San Francisco, CA, 15 Jan 2017, 22: pp64-71.
Eastwood, David, ‘Open Studio,’ in Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo (eds.), Make or Break: A Live Art Project, Sydney, Firstdraft Gallery, 2016, pp19-23.
Eastwood, David, ‘The Atemporal Mirror’, Ubiquity: The Journal of Pervasive Media, Vol.5 No.1, 2016, pp149–59.
Eastwood, David, and Thomas, Paul, ‘Disruptive Agents: Transdisciplinary and Posthumous Manifestations of the Studio,’ Ubiquity, Vol. 4, No. 1 & 2, 2015, pp3-21.
Eastwood, David, ‘Contaminated Immersion and Thomas Demand: The Dailies,’ Interference Strategies, Lanfranco Aceti and Paul Thomas (eds.), Leonardo/ISAST, San Francisco, 2014, pp36-49.
Eastwood, David, ‘Speculative Spaces’, Artist Profile, Issue 22, 2013, pp142-143.
Bibliography
Anderson, Patricia, ‘City in Everyone’s Image’, The Weekend Australian, August 23–24, 2003, Review p21.
Burke, Justin, ‘The studio as subject’, The Australian, September 19, 2013, p14.
Carsley, Gary, David Eastwood: Mise en scéne, exhibition catalogue, 2007.
Edwards, A.J, ‘David Eastwood: Pseudo Studio’, Art Almanac, October 2013, pp44-45,
Frost, Andrew, ‘Pleasure and Paint’, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 5, 2010, Metro p14.
Frost, Joe, ‘David Eastwood’, Artist Profile, issue 8, 2009, pp66–69.
Gibson, Prue, ‘Draped, folded and concealed’, Australian Art Review, Issue 23, May – July 2010, pp62–63.
Grant, Ian, David Eastwood: Decoy Décor, exhibition catalogue, 2011.
Low, Lenny Ann, ‘Rust For Life’, The Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition, November 17–18, 2001, Metropolitan p13.
McDonald, John, A Guide to Australian Art and Galleries, Zhu Junbo, Shanghai, 2010, p196.
Schwartzkoff, Louise, ‘Open Gallery’, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 14–15, 2009, Spectrum p18.
