Jurek Wybraniec

Jurek Wybraniec was born in 1958, in Perth, Western Australia, as a first generation Australian of Polish heritage. He studied fine art at Claremont School of Art, followed by Curtin University of Technology where he received a Bachelor of Arts. Since his first show in 1986 Jurek has maintained a dynamic multidisciplinary practice which investigates how the aesthetics of popular culture and the everyday may be reinterpreted through a reductive approach; inviting the viewer to reassess their engagement with objects, materials, colour, space and place.

For over three decades Jurek has exhibited broadly in solo and group exhibitions, as well as national survey shows such as Meridian; Currents in Australian Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and In Abstract: form and essence in recent Western Australian painting at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in Perth.

Jurek has participated in a survey of contemporary practice at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and featured in the National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

His more recent projects have included a solo exhibition at Art Collective WA; Sydney Contemporary 2017; TR + AS + JW, WA Focus at the Art Gallery of Western Australia; Geelong Contemporary Art Award; Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize; Green and Gold, a collaboration with David Atwood at Fremantle Arts Centre; and an exhibition with the AC4CA at FABRIKculture in Hégenheim, France.

Jurek has won a number of grants and awards, most recently he the Albany Art Prize in 2016 and in 2015 he won the Bankwest Art Prize. His work is represented extensively in both public and private collections, such as: the Art Gallery of Western Australia; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the National Gallery of Australia; Daimler Chrysler Collection, Berlin; The University of Western Australia, Australian Capital Equity, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, The Wesfarmers Collection, Western Mining Corporation, Murdoch University, Bankwest, Artbank, Bunbury City Art Collection.