Nigel Sense
Nigel Sense is a Wollongong-born Australian artist. Nomadic by nature, Sense’s keen interest in travel and discovery informs his idiosyncratic style.
Sense has exhibited his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and in Sri Lanka. In 2009 Sense was exhibited as part of the inaugural Colombo Art Biennale, and invited again in 2012. His award winning first Sydney solo exhibition titled I Work With Tools was held at Sheffer Gallery in September 2012. In the intervening years, Sense’s unique and dynamic style has garnered great attention and success, with the artist being commissioned by Porsche in 2021 to create a custom livery for the Taycan in celebration of the German auto manufacturer’s 70th anniversary in Australia. Sense’s first institutional solo show is to be held in 2022 at the National Centre of Contemporary Art (NCCA) in Darwin.
Nigel Sense draws inspiration from the American abstract expressionists and pop artists of the 1960’s, and like the pop artists of this time, he has turned mass reproduction and the influence of the mass media into subject matter. His works could loosely be described as neo-expressionist and social expressionist.
Employing various pop art techniques and the tactic of painting the things he knows, Sense considers his role as an artist and his work reflects an inclusive suburban upbringing and experience. Sense’s paintings are immediate and striking, engaging the viewer in an intimate way with his everyday world. Communicating through fun and humour, his paintings seek understanding and empathy.
Describing his process as primal and instinctive, Sense paints energetically on canvas. His overlaid imagery mimics his state of mind, starting from instinct and emotion, and putting the figurative composition second.
As an artist he is drawn to painting the everyday. From characters in the workplace to finding joy in the mundane. His works act as a social commentary and exploration of the human condition.
Recently Sense has begun creating works inspired by the sensation of visual overstimulation when travelling, embracing the feeling you get from waking up in a different bed every day and experiencing everything for the first time. With Covid putting his travels to a halt, Sense has continued this approach of embracing the unknown, but instead of finding shapes and lines from the lettering on a street sign in Bangkok to the patterns on tiles of an old Chinese shop-house in Penang, he has turned this lens locally, to draw visual inspiration from the landscape and culture of the Northern Territory.
Sense’s work is frequently selected for major awards; most recently: Salon De Refuses (Finalist, 2019 & 2020), Mosman Art Prize (Finalist, 2018), Black Swan Art Prize (Finalist, 2017), Mosman Art Prize (Finalist, 2017) and the Kilgour Art Prize (Finalist, 2017).
