Grant Stevens is an Australian artist currently based in Sydney. Working mainly with video, photography, sculpture, and installation, his practice explores how the verbal and non-verbal languages of popular culture interface with contemporary subjectivity. Often merging the highly personal with the bleakly generic, his works seek to understand the apathies and oxymorons plaguing the 21st Century self. His works regularly take their inspiration and reference material directly from television, movies, and the Internet, as they seek to unravel ambivalent connections between cultural clichés and lived experiences. Fascinated by quests for happiness, self-improvement, and existential meaning, Stevens’ work questions how the forms and messages of emotional capitalism are impacting contemporary experiences and expressions of selfhood.
Stevens has exhibited regularly since the early 2000’s, with numerous solo exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States. His works have also featured in many significant curated exhibitions at publicly funded museums and contemporary art spaces including: GOMA Q: Contemporary Art from Queensland, QAGOMA, Brisbane (2015); The Wandering: Moving Images from the MCA Collection, touring exhibition, various venues (2013-14); We Used to Talk About Love, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2013); Desire Lines, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2012); Life is Risk/Art is Risk, National Artists’ Self-Portrait Prize, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2011); and The Leisure Class, the Australian Cinematheque, QAGOMA, Brisbane (2007).
Stevens’ works are held in many private collections, as well as public institutions such as: the Queensland Art Gallery|Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Artbank; the University of Queensland Art Collection, Brisbane; the Chartwell Collection, New Zealand; and the Oppenheimer Collection, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Kansas, USA.
Stevens received his PhD from the Queensland University of Technology in 2007, and is currently Deputy Head of School (Art) at UNSW Art & Design, Sydney.
Grant Stevens
The Mountain and the Waterfalls
STARKWHITE Auckland
01 – 29 Sep 2018
Grant Stevens
Hold Together, Fall Apart
STARKWHITE Auckland
07 Jul – 02 Aug 2015
Grant Stevens
Auckland Art Fair Projects
25 – 29 May 2016
Grant Stevens
Thinking Feeling
Art Stage Singapore
22 – 25 Jan 2015
Grant Stevens, Clinton Watkins
Video Contemporary | Sydney Contemporary
10 – 13 Sep 2013
Grant Stevens, Peter Stichbury, John Reynolds
Art LA Contemporary
28 – 31 Jan 2010
Gavin Hipkins, Hye Rim Lee, Jae Hoon Lee and Grant Stevens
Shanghai Contemporary
10 – 13 Sep 2008