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Sue Cramer

@susecramer

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Still great vinyl stock available today!!!
🧡🎶

JOHN NIXON VINYL COLLECTION

Sale Continues
SATURDAY OCTOBER 3 12-6PM
1/15 JOHNSTON STREET
COLLINGWOOD
(enter via Bedford Street)

All Welcome!!! 🧡🎶

#johnnixon
#vinyllovers
#recordcollection
#sonicyouth
#bobdylan by @susecramer

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11 days ago

An afternoon of music! It’s been wonderful listening to, talking about, and sharing John’s collection of vinyl records with those of you who came by today.

The John Nixon Collection vinyl sale continues tomorrow from 12-6pm, with some more stock on the floor.

1/15 Johnston St, Collingwood (enter via Bedford St)

#vinyllovers
#recordcollection
#johnnixon taken in Collingwood, Victoria, Australia by @susecramer

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12 days ago

Some glimpses of upcoming vinyl sale from the personal record collection of Australian artist John Nixon.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 2
SATURDAY OCTOBER 3 12-6PM
1/15 JOHNSTON STREET
COLLINGWOOD
(enter via Bedford Street)

A rare opportunity to explore and acquire material assembled by Nixon over decades of engagement with music.

#vinyllovers
#recordcollection
#johnnixon taken in Collingwood, Melbourne by @susecramer

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13 days ago

JOHN NIXON — RECORD COLLECTION SALE!

A selection from the personal record collection of Australian artist John Nixon.

LPs, 7-inch records, CDs and ephemera, spanning experimental, punk, post-punk, electronic, jazz, 60s-70s blues, folk, psych, pop and independent music.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 2
SATURDAY OCTOBER 3
12–6PM

1/15 JOHNSTON STREET COLLINGWOOD
(enter via Bedford Street)

A rare opportunity to explore and acquire material from a collection brought together by Nixon over decades of deep engagement with music. by @susecramer

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18 days ago

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a month ago

Last week we opened a beautiful new display of John’s silver paintings at Two Rooms in Auckland, New Zealand.

This is the first exhibition of silver paintings since John died and follows four EPW: Silver exhibitions he presented during his lifetime.

Here are a few words I wrote for Two Rooms:

Begun in 1995, John Nixon’s EPW: Silver developed over the following decade and a half as a sustained exploration of the monochrome, materiality and light. In Nixon’s words, ‘silver is opaque and reflective, a non-colour in the sense that we know colours to be’. Inspired by sunlight playing across silver-painted industrial rooftops, these paintings situate Nixon within an orbit of modernist experiment—Constructivism, Minimalism, the ZERO group and Fontana’s Spatialism. From tactile effects on rough hessian to smoother applications on MDF and canvas, their glimmering surfaces might evoke the infinity of the cosmos or the flash of sunlight on snow, while conveying above all the pure force of abstraction.

If you are in town, you might take the opportunity to visit EPW: Silver, the exhibition is on until 3 October.

Photography by Sam Hartnett.

@tworoomsgallery
#johnnixon taken in Two Rooms by @susecramer

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a month ago

John Nixon | EPW: Silver | 28 August - 3 October 2026

Full documentation and essay by Sue Cramer now online.

“A central inspiration for this body of works was the lively play of sunlight across silver-painted industrial
roofs, which Nixon saw through a fellow artist’s studio window in a New York high-rise building. This encounter from 2001 affirmed for him the strength of silver as an alternative to orange.

‘ I noticed the rooftops had been recently repainted with silver paint. The paint was thick and dense to waterproof the surfaces over many years. The sight was visually impressive as the sun shone on the rooftops covering the city blocks below.’ “

Sue Cramer, August 2026

#johnixon
#tworoomsgallery by @susecramer

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a month ago

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Continuing today is Silver, including these significant works by John Nixon.

Silver is less a colour than a condition of light. It exists in continual negotiation with its surroundings, changing with atmosphere, reflection and time. Never entirely fixed, it oscillates between presence and absence, surface and depth, object and perception. In this exhibition, silver becomes an active field through which material, space and experience are brought into relation.

Across the practices of Andrew Browne, John Nixon, Lachlan Stonehouse and Shuhei Fukuda, silver is approached not as a shared aesthetic but as a conceptual proposition. It reflects, absorbs and transforms. It carries associations of industry and technology, ritual and ornament, the celestial and the everyday. Simultaneously reflective and elusive, silver resists certainty, continually returning the viewer to the act of looking itself.

For John Nixon (1949–2020), whose lifelong investigation of the monochrome remains a significant contribution to Australian abstraction, colour functioned as a point of departure rather than conclusion. His practice sought to reduce painting to its essential conditions, stripping away narrative and representation to reveal the possibilities of material, form and process. Through his rigorous yet experimental approach, Nixon explored the monochrome as both an idea and an ongoing field of enquiry. Silver extends this investigation, occupying the fertile space between neutrality and luminosity, where colour becomes not an image, but a proposition — a way of thinking through the fundamental conditions of art itself. (Extract - full essay available on our website)

Aaron Martin, 2026

All images by @simonjstrong

Andrew Browne appears courtesy of Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
John Nixon appears courtesy of the Estate of John Nixon and Anna Schwartz Projects, Melbourne @annaschwartzprojects

For a catalogue of available works contact Missy at info@fivewalls.com.au

-
John Nixon
Silver Monochrome (Briar Hill)
2003
enamel paint on hessian and MDF
51 x 51 x 3 cm

courtesy of the Estate of John Nixon and Anna Schwartz Projects, Melbourne

-
John Nixon
Silver Monochrome
2005
en taken in Five Walls by @susecramer

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2 months ago

Join us between 3–5pm on Saturday 13 June 2026 to celebrate the opening of John Nixon: EPW: 2001 at Fine Arts, Sydney.

This marks the inaugural presentation of his work at the gallery.

The exhibition offers a snapshot of John’s long-running Experimental Painting Workshop (EPW) at a pivotal point three decades into his five-decade career.

2001 was the year our family moved from Sydney back to our hometown of Melbourne where, at the invitation of the late Maudie Palmer AO, John undertook an artist residency at a farmhouse in Warrandyte. To mark this sense of place, many paintings made during the residency bear the ink-stamped insignia Longridge Farm on their reverse side.

Meanwhile, our search for a permanent studio led us to a 1964 modernist house in the nearby suburb Briar Hill. The purpose-built studio John later constructed in the backyard became the base for his art practice until his death in 2020, and continuing still now through the work of the Estate.

2001 was also a year of significant international activity for John. A survey of EPW: Orange was staged at Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel, Switzerland. This was followed by his first European retrospective,Works: 1968–2001, presented at the Stiftung für konkrete Kunst (Foundation for Abstract Art) in Reutlingen, Germany, occupying over 1,000 square metres of the foundation’s industrial-scale building. Several works from these exhibitions are displayed at Fine Arts, Sydney.

In April, John also travelled to New York, where the glimmering expanse of silver-painted roofs seen through artist Peter Halley’s studio window reinvigorated his engagement with EPW: Silver, prompting the inscription ‘New York’ on several silver paintings made that year, now also on show at the gallery.

It seems fitting that paintings made in 2001, the year we left Sydney, are now being shown in the city we called home for twelve years. The exhibition extends June-July. Please come along. We look forward to seeing you there.

Sue and Emma

@fineartssydney
@emmnixon
#johnnixon

Photos by John Nixon, views of Longridge Farm studio and house 2001. by @susecramer

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4 months ago

Thanks to Warren Taylor for designing this fabulous poster in the manner of The Donkey’s Tail graphics. 🧡🧡🥁🎺 Sunday’s concert for John commences at Heide at 11 am, and also features music by Domenico de Clario and David Chesworth.

The concert takes place within the exhibition, so a gallery admission ticket is required.

Closing weekend of the exhibition:
John Nixon: Song of The Earth 1968-2020. (Final day Monday 9 March, 2026). taken in Heide Museum of Modern Art by @susecramer

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7 months ago

Please join us on Sunday March the 8th at Heide for a celebratory concert in honour of John, reflecting his long-term interest in experimental music from the days of Anti-Music (1979-1983) to the formation of The Donkey’s Tail (2007-2020). We are honoured to have presentations from artists Domenico de Clario and David Chesworth who have written pieces especially for John, followed by a performance by several members of The Donkey’s Tail.

De Clario will present, in his words: ‘a small selection of songs, to honour both John’s lifelong engagement with meaning, intent, and destiny - and his consequent immense achievements - as well as the composers, who through their lyrics and melodies embodied the spirit inherent in the totality of John’s work, truly a song of the earth.’

As Chesworth says: “Fun Machine Dirges was written in response to the passing of two close friends. At the heart of the performance is the Baldwin Fun Machine—a 1970s domestic organ given to me by one of the departed. Its warm, nostalgic tones selected via organ-stop buttons combine and resonate poignantly in our current moment.”

John described The Donkey’s Tail as ‘an experimental, abstract, free-noise, improv garage ensemble’. Named after a Moscow artists’ group from 1912 that fused Russian folk art with Cubo-Futurist painting, the band blended avant-garde, Dada, and free-improvisation genres.

This concert reunites several former members of The Donkey’s Tail in tribute to John and the band’s wild, experimental spirit.

11:00 am
Domenico de Clario: seven songs for john

11.45am
David Chesworth: Fun Machine Dirges

12.30pm
The Donkey’s Tail: Reassembled for John
Led by David Palliser, with John Bartley, Isabella Darcy, Laura Delaney, Anna Ephraim, Maeve Ephraim-Taylor, Ljiljana Green, Jacqueline Stojanović and Warren Taylor.

(Details in bio)

View of The Donkey’s Tail homemade instruments, paintings and posters at Heide.

‘Portraits of The Donkey’s Tail Band Members’ together with ‘Black and White Guitar’ 2015, ‘The Donkey’s Tail’ 2017, and a painting for LO LO the donkey 2013.

Detail of the above.

The Donkey’s Tail (TDT) display boards showing a selection of CDs and other TDT works. taken in Heide Museum of Modern Art by @susecramer

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8 months ago

It has been both uplifting and heartrending to spend time with John’s work over the past few months at Heide. Thank you to all who have visited and shared such warm appreciation for John’s art, and the exhibition, which sadly soon comes to an end. The final day is Monday the 9th of March (Labour Day Weekend).

A highlight has been the rare chance to present ‘Self-Portrait, Non-Objective Composition’ 1982, a striking ensemble of hand-typed text together with paintings on newspaper and red cloth. The work was first exhibited at ‘documenta 7’ in Kassel, Germany (and is now on loan from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra). Invited by European curator Germano Celant (a defining voice of the Italian Arte Povera movement), John, together with Imants Tillers, were the first Australian artists to be included in this prestigious international survey.

Though familiar with this work through images, I was moved to encounter it first-hand, and to experience its distinctive material and emblematic qualities.

Curating ‘John Nixon: Song of the Earth 1968–2020’ has been momentous for me, both professionally and personally. I am deeply grateful to Heide for the opportunity, especially Artistic Director Lesley Harding and Senior Curator Melissa Keys. My sincere thanks as well to the wonderful Visitor Services team and dedicated Volunteer Guides. Their generous and heartfelt support has meant a great deal to both my daughter Emma and me.

The final weekend features a concert for John on the 8th of March at 11am, all are welcome. (See link in bio). Be sure to visit the exhibition before the 9th March.

1. Me looking at ‘Self-Portrait, Non-Objective Composition’ 1982, at Heide.
2. Original presentation at documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany 1982.
3. Me with John in front of the Fridericianum building at documenta 8, 1987.
4. ‘Wielding the broom’ 1982, detail from John’s work in documenta 7, and the first of one hundred typed texts he produced during the 1980s.

#johnnixon
@heidemoma
@emmnixon taken in Heide Museum of Modern Art by @susecramer

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8 months ago