Bruce armstrong artist biography

Armstrong's fascination with the animal form hails back to art school.
Bruce Armstrong (1957-2024) was a sculptor, painter, printer and charcoal artist.
Bruce Armstrong was an Australian sculptor, painter, printer and charcoal artist.

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Bruce Armstrong

By Ashley Crawford

| October 31, 2016

When the National Gallery of Victoria proposed a major exhibition of Bruce Armstrong’s sculptures, he rejected the idea of staging a retrospective, and he also wanted to include some drawings, in addition to his wild menagerie of creatures cleaved and carved from blocks of redgum and cypress. The result is a collection of works divided into three themes, staged over three floors, and the result is a beguiling anthology of strange beings.

Strange beasts haunt the lair of Bruce Armstrong’s studio. Looming out from the shadows are bears and birds and other denizens of the sculptor’s iconic deities, poised and powerful. At times creatures not of this world emerge as though from the ancient maritime maps that warn where monsters dwell. Pagan gods revelling in their redgum and oregon flesh, impervious to the elements. At times members of his menagerie have guarded the Docklands precinct (‘Eagle, aka Bunjil’, the spirit creator of the Kulin nations), at others they have guarded the portal of the National Galler

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Bruce ARMSTRONG (b.1957)

"I get up in the morning and turn on the chainsaw, that's the professional part, making sculptures, calling clients," he says. "The drawing is more like relaxing, almost meditation, a way out that is genuinely enjoyable. Because I never intended to show it, there is no pressure, no dates to meet. There's no trauma involved." *

Bruce Armstrong (b. 1957) is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary sculptors. Armstrong studied painting and sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). In 2005 Armstrong was an Archibald Prize finalist with a self-portrait inclusive of his iconic eagle motif. His totemic sculptures , so unmistakable conceptually, through his repetition of the same imagery of animals, birds and mythological creatures.

"In a way, for me, birds represent all things," he says. "They are all sorts of different things to different people, you can have a predatory bird, a nurturing bird; it's a pet or a threat. I find they say more about people than pe

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Bruce Armstrong

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