WELCOMING YVETTE COPPERSMITH TO DIANNE TANZER GALLERY + PROJECTS

June 5, 2012

We are pleased to announce that we now represent Yvette Coppersmith in Victoria.

Yvette is known for her portraiture and depictions of interior-scapes. She has been a finalist in numerous prizes such as the 2009 Archibald Prize; portrait of John Safran, and in 2008 with a portrait of Paul Capsis. She was a finalist in the Arthur Guy Memorial Award Bendigo Art Gallery 2011, RBS Emerging Artist Award  2011, Black Swan Prize for Portraiture 2011, Stan And Maureen Duke Gold Coast Art Prize 2010, Redland Art Award 2010, Fletcher Jones Art Prize 2010, Xstrata Percival Portrait Award 2010, Portia Geach Memorial Prize 2003, 2007, 2008,  and the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize 2002, 2006, 2007.

Yvette Coppersmith was also the inaugural recipient of the Metro Art Award in 2003 and has been a finalist 5 times subsequently.

She has completed many high-profile commissions including a portrait of Justice Rosemary Balmford, commissioned by Chief Justice Marilyn Warren for the Supreme Court of Victoria, and Rupert Myer AM for Trinity College, The University of Melbourne.

 Sophie with Lulu, 2011, oil on linen, 107x102cm

Yvette Coppersmith’s work investigates body and place. Her work explores places and imagery that surround the body and offer a mode of personal expression.

“The obsessive interest I’ve had in depicting details of the skin, creases of a shirt and gaze of the eye has been transferred to the interior space of the home.”  The intimacy inherent in an artist/model relationship, is also seen in the relationship between the people who inhabit the space but are not visible in the scene. The house, Jean Baudrillard claims, is the symbolic equivalent of the body, where “man is bound to the objects around him by the same visceral intimacy that binds him to the organs of his own body.”