Karl WIEBKE

born 1944, Detmold, Germany
lives and works Melbourne, Victoria

This group of 24 individual drawings by Karl Wiebke is an element of a larger series of 162 drawing titled Flags. Each drawing consists of an arrangement of rectangles and squares on small, uniformed sized paper. Each work is carefully drawn with a pencil, ruler and then coloured with yellow and blue with inks. Each drawing is numbered and signed as an individual work.

The flag is an abstract design that may stand for a greater abstraction, such as a nation, or communicate in sign language, such as the signals used at sea. Wiebke’s flags contain both connotations but represent nothing specific. While Wiebke‘s devoted to process, he is not a theorist. The meaning of the work springs directly from the way it is made, from the disciples and materials involved. 

Karl Wiebke studied Fine Art at the Hochschule fr bildende Kunst in Hamburg from 1972-1976 before arriving in Australia in 1981. He settled in Perth for a period of twenty years and relocated to Melbourne in 2001.

Since his first solo exhibition in 1968 at Die Malwand in Rotenburg, Germany, Wiebke has exhibited consistently in Germany, India, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. He has won several notable awards including the Australia Council Artists Development Fellowships Grant in 1990, the Australia-India Council Grant of 1999 and an Arts WA Creative Development Grant Fellowship in 2000.

Wiebke’s contribution to Australian painting was celebrated in 1994 with a major retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth. More recently a retrospective slice of his work was showcased by curator the late John Stringer in his last and critically acclaimed exhibition, Cross Currents at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2007.

Wiebke’s work is represented in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the National Gallery of Victoria, The Art Gallery of Western Australia and numerous corporate and private collections in Germany, India and Australia.

Other selected artwork acquisitions