C a r o l A r c h e r
My art practice spans drawing, watercolour, ink painting and printmaking. Much of my recent work is centred on the forested places I encounter at home on Worimi land, near Bulahdelah, New South Wales, as well as further afield. I make pictures that aim to convey the sense of immersion and wonder I feel in such environments. I’m especially interested in liminal places — where trees meet ground or sky or water — and the interplay of light and shadow.
Carol Archer holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and Philosophy (1980) and a Secondary Art Teaching Diploma from Sydney University (1981), a Painting Diploma, Canberra School of Art (1989), a Masters Research Degree, University of Western Sydney (1998) and a Doctorate on Contemporary Painting and Feminist Aesthetics, Hong Kong University (2006). These formal studies have been complemented by numerous short courses in printmaking and ink painting in Japan and Australia.
Archer has had more than a dozen solo exhibitions of her work and almost as many of her collaborative art projects, as well as inclusion in numerous group exhibitions. Her work has been shown in Australia, Portugal, Hong Kong, Macao, China, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Japan. Archer’s most recent solo exhibitions are Thicket, Shop Gallery, Glebe, (2024), Standing Still The Trees, Shop Gallery, Glebe,(2021) and Drawing Breath/ Desenhar Respirar, Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, Lisbon, Portugal (2017). Marking the culmination of Archer’s long-running collaborative art project, Postcards Between Friends was shown at Leung Fong Oi Wan Gallery and K11 Art Cabinets, Hong Kong, (2014 – 15). She has been a finalist in the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing (2018), the Greenway Art Prize (2019) and the Waverley Art Prize (2023).
Archer’s work is retained in numerous private and public collections in Australia and abroad, including Artbank, Bundanon Trust, New England Regional Art Museum and Hong Kong Trade Office, Geneva, Switzerland. The recipient of four project grants from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (2000, 2001, 2003, 2010) and one from the Macao Foundation (2017), she has also been awarded artist residencies in Australia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Spain, Cyprus and the U.S.A.
An educator and visual arts researcher as well as a practising artist, Archer has taught art history and practice in schools, colleges and universities in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Macao, as well as English as a second and foreign language. Her most recent full-time teaching position was as an Assistant Professor in the Visual Studies Department at Lingnan University, Hong Kong (2008 – 2015).
Archer’s research has been published in journals such as the International Journal of Art and Design Education, the British Journal of Aesthetics and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. Her most recent publication is her essay ‘The Ambivalent Paintings of Judy Watson’, which was selected for inclusion in Anne Marsh’s Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia (2021).
Carol Archer was elected a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute in 2025.