I...

$40,000 Acquisitive Prize

Michael Lindeman

I... (detail) 2020

Watercolour and acrylic on canvas
196 x 138 cm

About the Artwork

With bashful humour my self-portrait titled I… sets out to activate repressed impulses, embody alienation, disrupt convention and invert structures of power. In the spirit of opposition my masked portrait is a type of anti-selfie, swerving around the bottleneck of narcissism and attention seeking.

I… is my manifesto and therapy at once, both image and text confronting my position as an artist and mortality. Stream of consciousness self-analysis meets jarring institutional critique, I have found my zone of contemplation. My portrait uses a self-reflexive humour as a strategic tool with which to analyse cultural production and entertain myself.

The brand of humour I use, an externalising of my doubts and fears, satisfies a misguided urge to be vulnerable and sincere. I… is an insight into my psyche, relying on a parallel, removed mode of presenting one’s bodily self.

About the Artist

Michael Lindeman was awarded a BFA, Hons (First Class) in 1998 and an MFA from Cofa, UNSW, in 2004.

Lindeman has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions include Art Habits (2021), An Awkward Dance (2018) and Studio Chatter (2015), Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney; The Creative Act, The Delaware Contemporary, USA (2018); LA International Biennal, 18th Street, L.A. (2001); and The Lounge, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney (2000). In 2007 he was awarded a residency through ISCP, New York.

In 2010, Lindeman won both the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, Campbelltown Arts Centre, and the Sulman Prize, AGNSW, Sydney. He was a finalist for the Archibald Prize in 2011 and 2013 and the National Self-Portrait Prize, University of Queensland Art Museum, in 2013. In 2013 and 2020 he was awarded the Arts Projects Grant, and the New Work Mid-Career Grant in 2016 from the Australia Council for the Arts.

Judge's Comments

“This work by Michael Lindeman, I just kept coming back to and I found it quiet compelling. It’s called I… and for every phrase behind you, add I… and you get the thoughts that are going through his head. That is a really brave and revealing thing to do, to reveal your inner thoughts. I was drawn to his honesty and I was drawn to the sophistication of the work. The reason why is that the portrait seems quite simple in many ways, but it has a great deal of complexity.
The portrait is a self-portrait of Michael and it has text in the background. He is straight away introducing some complexity between the image and the text. It identifies issues about identity, and you see in the portrait that Michael does depict his face, but he does so by covering up his face with a paper bag.”
– Percival Portrait Painting Prize judge Professor Elisabeth Findlay