Apart from a spell in Sydney (1960-62) Shannon lived and worked in Melbourne for the rest of his life, exhibiting regularly in Sydney and Melbourne as well as in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. His characteristic vision of the city – usually a roof top or birds eye view of streets, houses and factories earned him a wide following. The late 1970s saw a change in focus. In 1980 he bought a small house near Heathcote (north of Melbourne). His interest in landscape had grown following a visit to David Chapman in Tasmania in 1974 (he exhibited small studies at Macquarie in 1979) and in the 1980s the landscape became the central concern of his work. It is a landscape he clearly fell in love with – from the rock faces of the quarry paintings through the more intimate glimpses of hill sides with trees and bush tracks, to the large canvasses of spacious hills stretching to distant horizons. A long battle with Parkinson’s disease preceded the artist’s death in 1993. SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS1952-57 Peter Bray Gallery, Melbourne
1956-88 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
1959-77 Australian Galleries, Melbourne
1961-71 South Yarra Galleries, Melbourne
1966 Gallery A, Melbourne
1969-71 Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane
1962-65 Bonython Gallery, Adelaide
1972-87 Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne
1986 Survey, RMIT & travelling to TMAG,
La Trobe Regional Art Gallery and
Art Gallery of New South Wales
1993 Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney
1997 Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne
AWARDS & PRIZES 1953 & 1955 Crouch Prize, Ballarat COLLECTIONSNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra IMPORTANT SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: Kim Bonython. Modern Australian Painting, all editions The Australian Painters 1964-66: Paintings from the Mertz Collection, exhibition catalogue, Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC Alan McCulloch, Encyclopedia of Australian Art, all editions Nancy Benko, Art & Artists of South Australia, Adelaide, 1969 Elwyn Lynn, Michael Shannon, South Yarra Galleries, 1970 Carl Andrew, “Michael Shannon”, Art & Australia, vol 12, no 4, 1974 Mervyn Horton (ed). Australian Painters of the 1970s, Sydney, 1975 Elwyn Lynn, Australian Landscape and its Artists, Sydney, 1977 Mary Eagle & Jan Minchin, The George Bell School, Sydney, 1981 Gary Catalano, The Years of Hope, Melbourne, 1981 Carnegie International, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, 1982
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Michael Shannon was born near Kapunda, South Australia, in 1927 and after schooling in Adelaide, enrolled at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in 1945 (under William Dargie) – also studying part time with George Bell. Overseas travel took him to London, Paris (studies under Leger) and Florence.
