Painting, Printmaking and "Multimedia" Installations

Bill Meyer, an established middle generation artist has lived and worked in Europe, Israel and U.S.A. whilst maintaining a studio base in rural Australia.

In a career of forty years Meyer has used photography, and devised sound works using a multitude of electronic and acoustic instruments as part of installation and performance pieces. He has painted murals, made paper, published poetry, and has conducted workshops for children and adults in forests, schools, public galleries and community centres. He has published more than 400 editions of etchings, screen prints and lithographs.Hamkom, his first book was published in 2006

As a master print-maker, Meyer established a fine art editioning studio in London during the seventies when he also worked with World Union of Jewish Students. He has worked with major Australian artists at Port Jackson Press publishing in Melbourne. During the eighties, whilst a committee member, and later as president of the Print Council of Australia, Meyer curated travelling exhibitions including the controversial Print as Object. He also created Gapspace, an exhibition of his prints and drawings which toured twenty four regional Australian galleries. In 1995 he participated in The wandering Jew, Myth & metaphor, curated and toured for the Jewish Museum of Australia, an organisation with which he has collaborated in numerous other curated and solo projects.

As a teacher he has instructed and lectured on contract and as a guest artist at schools, art colleges and universities in England, U.S.A. and Australia.

Meyer has received grants and sponsorship from the British Council, the Australia Council. He has also been funded by State Arts organisations for community projects in Wagga, N.S.W., and Camperdown, Victoria. Another grant brought Meyer to the Victorian Arts Centre for a multi media performance and installation piece. His work is in public, corporate, and private collections

Born in Australia in 1942, Meyer graduated from Melbourne University in art history and language and then from the National Gallery Art School, Victorian College of the Arts, completing his formal art training at the Royal College of Art in London. Research at the New York Y.I.V.O. Institute, as well as Yeshiva and Kollel learning has provided much of the conceptual underpinning of Meyer’s artwork. He has been a frequent visitor to Israel, where, during the ‘80s and ‘90s he was resident at the Mishkenot Sha’ananim artists’ studios in Jerusalem.

The theme of the wanderer recurs as metaphor and biography. Themes of forests as sanctuary and places for spiritual growth, family histories, and the sense of MAKOM, special place, interact with aspects of transience, exile and holocaust. Meyer the wanderer reinvents himself during each new journey. This metamorphosis is recorded on small etching plates, camera and notebook. The ostensible subjects, Australian landscape, rocky Judean hills, alley walls, barbed wire in Jerusalem, or in Berlin, are really psychological landscapes.

http://billmeyer-artist.com/