Ian North

Professor Ian North is a full-time artist who is also a widely published writer on the visual arts. He employs photography and painting, sometimes combined, addressing considerations of place, identity and the post-conceptual. He has exhibited in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide (thirteen solo exhibitions), and in group exhibitions in London, Asia and the United States. His work is represented in 15 Australian public collections.

His writing includes books on the pioneer modernists Dorrit Black and Margaret Preston in the 1970s, a range of essays on the impact of the Indigenous art revolution in the 1980s, and, later, the intellectual relationship between art and neuro-aesthetics.
Born in New Zealand, he emmigrated to Australia to become Curator of Paintings at the Art Gallery of South Australia 1971-80 and Foundation Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia 1980-84. He subsequently served on the National Gallery's Council and sat on the inaugural council of the Experimental Art Foundation, 1974, and of the Art Association of Australia, as President, helping to create the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand.

As Head and (later) Professor of the South Australian School of Art (1984-1993) he established the Anne and Gordon Samstag Scholarship Program and professionalised the University of South Australia Art Museum. Since 2001 he has actively contributed to the innovative postgraduate art history program offered jointly by the University of Adelaide and the Art Gallery of South Australia.