Julian Clavijo

Julian's practice ranges from hand sculpting to visual works to paintings and large public art pieces. In 2008, He graduated with honours from a Bachelor of Advertising at the Universidad Internacional de las Americas in Costa Rica. Following this, in 2011 he completed a Masters of Arts (Art in Public Space) at RMIT University in Melbourne during which he focused on urban space transformation through applied research into pattern and colour shifts in the urban landscape.

Trained as painter and sculptor since the early age of 6, Julian is a committed award-winning artist, who has focussed his research on the practice of material engagement and colour. He has explored urban space and transformation through a practical study of pattern and colour shift in the changing urban spaces infusing it into his art practice through the creation of sculptural / modular/ paintings based on the materialisation of colour, meaning and pattern creation.

Currently his artistic practice is based around capturing and portraying real stories based on human rights and social issues that have happened and continue to happen in countries in conflict around the world. He translates this into artistic expression focussing on vulnerable civilian populations and specifically on the innocent victims of armed and material war mostly depicting children as subjects.

Each of Clavijo’s latest works is part of a series of sculptures and paintings aimed at conveying and addressing these issues. In 2011, his first work exploring this theme, ‘Human Disintegration’, won the annual Banyule Outdoor Sculpture Prize in Melbourne, Australia, and made it to the final round in other two shows nationally and overseas.