Damian Broomhead

Over the past several years I’ve created an extensive series of oil pastel drawings depicting scenes from the first years of the Sydney colony and focusing on the interactions between the British and the indigenous inhabitants of that region. These energetic works engage with the historical narrative, representing stories and scenes distilled from contemporaneous accounts.
I’ve called the series ‘How to Draw Ghosts’, reason being that all the figures represented in the pictures are long gone, yet, although conjured up from scraps of the past, they still have an insistent presence. Given the tragic history of the relations between black and white Australia this is to be expected. Ghosts are not at rest, they are fiercely intent on communication with the living. So it follows that they may well insist on being drawn, perhaps that is why they are such good subjects for this kind of restoration.


Inga Clendinnen, award winning Australian historian;

“ Damian presents human actions and emotions at the moment of their happening, so restoring people from the past to their existential present. He gives them back their lives as they happened, before they are parsed and analysed as historians start writing about them. A Broomhead d...

Education
1988-91 BA (Hons) Melbourne University

Solo exhibitions
2016 'Seeing Things-Bennelong and Yemmerrawanne in London' Bondi Pavilion Sydney
2013 How to Draw Ghosts IV Bondi Pavilion, Sydney
2011 Scenes from Early Sydney La Perouse Museum, Sydney
2010 Installation Optus Centre, 367 Collins St, Melbourne
2009 How to Draw Ghosts 45 Downstairs, Flinders Lane, Melbourne
2007 Scenes from History Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne
1995 Houdini’s Escapes Linden Gallery, St Kilda, Melbourne

Selected Group Shows
2016 National Works on Paper finalist. Mornington Peninsular Gallery
2013 Gamaragal, Northern Tribes of Sydney, Manly Art Gallery, Sydney
2013 Shore Things Brightspace Melbourne
2001 Tomeiten Gallery Ando, Shinjuku Tokyo
2000 Tomeiten Gallery Ando, Shinjuku, Tokyo
1999 Tomeiten Gallery Ando, Shinjuku Tokyo
1998 Tomeiten Gallery Ando, Shinjuku Tokyo
1997 Tomeiten Gallery Mido, Ginza, Tokyo
1990 Postcard Show Linden Gallery Melbourne
1987 Postcard Show Linden Gallery Melbourne