Neil Haddon

Neil Haddon is a British Australian artist who has lived in Tasmania since 1996. Before emigrating to Hobart, Haddon lived and worked in Barcelona, Spain, for six years, showing regularly with Galeria Carles Poy.

Haddon’s recent work draws on his experience of migration and how a migratory way of working can be applied to creative practice. He uses an ‘migratory aesthetics’ of displacement (a collage like approach to painting) to reconfigure and combine imagery from his own biography with that of Tasmania’s fraught colonial history, amongst other subjects. He is known for his use of a wide range of styles from hard-edge geometric abstraction to looser, expressive figuration.

His paintings have been included in over 100 exhibitions in Australia, Europe, and the USA, including Theatre of the World, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) and La Maison Rouge, Paris, Strange Trees at The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG), and Contemporary Encounters, at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne. In addition, his work is held in significant national and international art collections, including The National Gallery of Victoria, The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Devonport Regional Gallery, The City of Whyalla Collection, The Gold Coast Art Gallery, and ArtBank, Sydney.

Haddon has been the recipient of significant art prizes and awards, including the 2018 Hadley Art Prize, the 2008 John Glover Prize, and the 2009 Whyalla Art Prize. He has been shortlisted for significant awards around Australia, including the Arthur Guy Memorial Prize in 2011 and 2015, the Glover Prize in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018, the Hadley Art Prize 2017, 2021, and 2022, the Sulman Prize in 2022, and the Wynne Prize in 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2016.

Haddon holds a PhD from the University of Tasmania and is Head of Painting at the School of Creative Arts and Media.