Born 1939, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works Sorrento, Victoria. Gareth Sansom is an artist, teacher and provocateur who has placed painting at the centre of his artistic production. His themes cover pop culture, sexual transgression and painting’s own history as seen through the lens of 20th-century modernist abstraction. Sansom had his first exhibition in 1959. His paintings of the 1960s were characterised by a distorted use of line, shape and colour and were influenced by abstract expressionism, Francis Bacon and Sidney Nolan. Over time, his work has also drawn on punk, dada, Basquiat, TS Eliot, urban graffiti, classical Greek philosophy and art theory across a variety of media ranging from drawing, printmaking and collage to photomontage and photography. Sansom was appointed Head of Painting at the Victorian College of the Arts from 1977–1985, and Dean School of Art at the Victorian College of the Arts from 1986–1991. He was artist-in-residence at the University of Melbourne in 1985, which was when he resumed his full-time painting practice with a series of large works on canvas. He held a retrospective, Gareth Sansom: Paintings 1956–1986, at the University Gallery, University of Melbourne in 1986, and another Gareth Sansom: Welcome to My Mind at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne in 2005. Selected group exhibitions include Today Tomorrow Yesterday, MCA, Sydney (2016); Painting. More Painting, ACCA, Melbourne (2016); Magic Object, Adelaide Biennial, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2016); POP to Popism, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2014); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013); Visions Past and Present, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne (2012); Artwork to Tapestry, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria (2011); We Call Them Pirates Out Here, MCA, Sydney (2010); Gallery A Sydney 1964–1983, Campbelltown Arts Centre, NSW and Newcastle Art Gallery, NSW (2009); Preserving the Past, Enriching the Future – Hugh Williamson’s Legacy, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2008); and Cross Currents: Focus on Australian Art, MCA, Sydney (2007). Sansom’s works are held in numerous public and private collections, nationally and internationally, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.