Andrew Atchison is an artist, writer and educator currently based in Melbourne. He works across sculpture, drawing, writing, public art projects and teaching.

Most recently his practice has been devoted to experimenting with how sculpture might be queered through processes of abstraction, and exploring how to represent queerness in the absence of either bodily figuration or tropes associated with the art-historical category of Queer Art. This exploration is motivated by an interest in finding ways of expressing queerness that are liberated from rigidly defined, fixed categories of identity. This reflects a stance that is critical of dominant forms of queer identity as restrictive and reductive of the potential for myriad forms that queerness – in art or personal expression - does or might take. A branch of this investigation focuses upon art in public space – specifically, how the language and communicative functions of public statuary and sculpture operate to inflect public space.

Atchison completed a Master of Fine Arts (research) at MADA, Monash University in 2018. He has exhibited extensively including at Testing Grounds, Greenwood Street Projects, Light Projects, West Space, Kings ARI, Seventh, First Site Gallery, and Next Wave and Midsumma Festivals. In addition, he has completed several artworks for public space, including a public art commission for City of Melbourne. He currently holds the position of Artist Educator at The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. 
Atchison used his residency at the Florence Peel Centre to further explore how queerness might be connoted through abstract visual language, focusing upon sculptural expressions.

Figure in the round (statue/lens), 2017. Photograph: Christo Crocker.

Image courtesy the artist