AUGUST WOLFF
August Wolff (it/they)
August is a white, queer, disabled, non-binary art witch based in Wadawurrung Country. It values process over productivity, using art as a vehicle for personal growth and collective liberation. August’s work is heavily influenced by their ancestors and the psychological experience of living in systems designed for profit rather than wellbeing.
Its work uses expressive colour and pattern in paintings, found object sculptures, functional art, photography and mixed media work, with an emphasis on the nude figure, the non-human and the sacred. Each piece is part devotion, part therapy and part confrontation.
When not in the art studio or picking up trash from the gutter to turn into art, August works as a trauma therapist with queer neurodiverse people and drinks copious amounts of tea.
featured in :
TBH Studios, Ballarat, VIC
The Old Auction House, Kyneton, VIC
North Preston Lifesaving Club, Preston, VIC
Werrington Train Station, NSW
Trans Space, Brunswick, VIC
Banyule Art Salon, Ivanhoe, VIC
BED BAR, Sydney, NSW
In.cub8er, Fitzroy, VIC
Festival of Really Good Sex, Melbourne, VIC
Tap Gallery, Sydney, NSW
Carrington Hotel, Katoomba, NSW
2016 Solo Exhibition, Wolff’s Cartomancy, GalleryOne88 Katoomba, NSW
2016 winner bentArt prize for new entrant, bentART, Wentworth Falls School of Arts, NSW and 2002 Prize winner for best sculptural piece, Braemar Gallery, Springwood, NSW.
Notable Commissions include:2024 ‘The Muses’, Book cover for Irisanya Moon and Moon Books.
2020-2021 Nonbinary Pride, Private Mural, Thomastown, VIC
2014 Il Pomodoro Italian Restaurant, Rishikesh, India
La Seeds of Life Restaurant, Rishikesh, India
Art is a form of magic - it has the ability to transform us, touching us in ways few things can. It reflects our deeper selves back at us and reconfigures us in the process.
My work is a spell to challenge the status quo and recognise diversity as the key to a holistically well society, that is, of the Earth and not separate to it.
Sensuality and the erotic feature strongly in many aspects of my art, highlighting the importance of joyful, sacred acts of pleasure. Capturing this through figurative work that also depicts 'otherness' and what is often under or misrepresented in modern media, shifts the shame narrative that perpetuates the beauty myth, and creates greater opportunities for connection with self and others.
I explore these themes through a variety of mediums. Painting has been present in my life from the time I could hold a brush, where as photography and my modelling work came later.
My curiosity for the complexity of relating and its effect on human psychology coaxed me out of my studio, and into collaborative art. From the sensual process of bodypainting to the painting of space, with life forms in front of a camera lens. It's from here I decided to make my own tarot deck.
'Wolff's Cartomancy - a photographic tarot journey' took me a total of 7 years and became my biggest work to date. It was mostly conceived in so called Australia, in particular on Darug and Gundungurra Land (aka the Blue Mountains west of Sydney), however it has since travelled the world and acts both as a collection of art and a divination and magical tool.
These days I am based in Ballaarat, on the land of the Wadawurrung People and continue my mischievous creating. I have returned to painting as my primary art-making practice with a current side quest in functional art.
I'm also a qualified holistic counsellor and complementary therapist. I run educational workshops and holistic kink rituals, and my counselling especially focusses on supporting people who are LGBTQIA+.
To learn more about my work please email august8wolff@gmail.com or check out www.thisisaugustwolff.com
© 2016 August Wolff All Rights Reserved
