Sam Leach (artist)


Sam Leach is an Australian contemporary artist. In 2010 he won the Archibald Prize and the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, becoming only the third artist to do so in the same year.
WWW samleach.net

Early life and education

Sam Leach was born in Adelaide, South Australia.
He began studying for a degree in economics in Adelaide. In 2000 he enrolled in the Diploma of Art program at RMIT in Melbourne, Victoria, before transferring to its Bachelor of Fine Art degree course. He completed a Masters in Fine Arts at RMIT in 2004.

Career

Leach's work has been exhibited in several museum shows. In 2008, it was included in Optimism at the Queensland Art Gallery and Neo Goth at the University of Queensland Art Museum The following year, his work was selected for the Shilo Project at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne and Horror Come Darkness at the Macquarie University Art Gallery.
In 2007, Leach's work portrait of former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett was selected as a finalist for the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2008, his self-portrait wearing a Nazi uniform and adopting a famous pose by Hitler, titled Self in Uniform, also selected as an Archibald finalist, was criticised as offensive by the Jewish community in Melbourne.
In 2010 his work was included in Still at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery.
Leach's portrait of musical comedian Tim Minchin won the Archibald Prize in 2010. In the same year, he won the Wynne Prize for his landscape Proposal for landscaped cosmos. In doing so he became only the third artist after William Dobell and Brett Whiteley to win the Archibald portrait prize and the Wynne landscape prize in the same year. The award generated some controversy due to the similarities, acknowledged by Leach, between his work and Boatmen Moored on the Shore of an Italian Lake, by seventeenth-century Dutch artist Adam Pynacker.
In 2022, Leach's painting of the farm Harewood, near Meadows, South Australia, was a finalist in the Wynne Prize. The painting, which was assisted by AI, was based on his childhood memories of having spent much time on the farm, which had been once owned by Sir Douglas Mawson and later by his grandparents and then aunt.

Recognition and awards

Collections

Leach's work is held in public collections of regional galleries of Geelong, Gold Coast, Coffs Harbour, Newcastle and Gippsland and the collections of La Trobe University and the University of Queensland.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • 2014 Theriophily and Substance, ART14 London
  • 2013 Careening Meteorites and the Early Mind, Future Perfect, Singapore
  • 2013 Sam Leach, Future Perfect, Singapore
  • 2011–12: Sam Leach: The Ecstasy of Infrastructure, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville
  • 2010 Platonia, COMODAA, London, UK
  • 2010 Cosmists, 24HR ART, Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin
  • 2005 The Lift, Spacement, Melbourne
  • 2005 The Longed for Departure, Bus Gallery, Melbourne

Group exhibitions