about

Jan Cleveringa (b. 1969, Sydney) is a contemporary multidisciplinary artist exploring the impact of global cultural change in society and in particular about how we relate to the environment and sustainability.

Cleveringa creates several unique, exclusive and authentic bodies of artwork such as painting, drawing, installation & sculpture.

Cleveringa graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree (1992) majoring in psychology and political science at the University of Sydney, Australia, and also studied Painting- Visual Arts Degree (1992-95) at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. He has a Master’s Degree in Management (Community) from the University of Technology, Sydney, having had a previous career in welfare organisations.

Cleveringa’s ‘Listening to Trees’ series of drawings, paintings and assemblages are inspired by the artistic collaboration with the natural moving environment- the wind and swaying branches create a mark-making communication between the artist and the natural environment. He then, later, disrupts this gestural communication by cutting up and reorganising the natural patterns as a metaphor of reorganising the ‘natural’, the patterns, and mark-making performance, and therefore also- the collaborative communication. The result is an abstract expressionist assemblage painting.

Cleveringa’s practice goes in deeply to describe the change in our current period of time by making aesthetic artefacts that are embedded in cultural change and in the history of our period no matter what that is. Cleveringa asks key societal questions about human culture which begs ‘mindfullness’ and challenges the viewer to think beyond the present and consider the future and the past.

Cleveringa began his arts practice in 2013 during his studio residency, of six months, at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Art Centre, Sydney, Australia, and since, he has had numerous residencies including the BigCi (Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives).

Some highlights, as his practice grows, are that in 2021 he won the Lake Light Sculpture Prize ($10,000), Jindabyne, NSW, Australia; the 2019 Eden Unearthed Art Prize ($10,000), Eden Gardens NSW, Australia; and the 2019 Scenic Sculpture Environment Prize ($5,000), Scenic World, Blue Mountains NSW, Australia.

In 2016 Cleveringa was awarded the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre Creative Arts Fund Grant ($2,000) for new experimental work in painting.

In addition, Cleveringa has also been awarded several community and public art project commissions.