Sean Edward Whelan - AUS

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

Represented Artist

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

Represented Artist

Artist Biography

Sean Edward Whelan is a self-taught artist whose vibrant surrealist works span a wide range of mediums, including drawing, painting, sculpture, and digital animation.

Whelan’s art invites viewers into a realm where the boundaries of possibility are limitless. His work often explores futuristic concepts that, while rooted in creative ideas, can challenge our understanding of the physical world. Their unique nature may seem more at home in the boundless realm of imagination than in the concrete reality of tangible experience.

Translating Whelan’s work is a journey in itself. It requires time and contemplation as if one were piecing together an ephemeral idea molecule by molecule. What begins as pure energy in the viewer’s imagination gradually takes shape, merging into a more static object or structure that exists in the three-dimensional world through Whelan’s artistic interpretations.

October 2023 Mini Solo Show: “Midnight Vignette is a short series of paintings based on the experiences of Whelan during a period spent abroad. Through his process of colourful reconstruction, the connections between the time, place and people present in those moments, originally captured in photographs, have been warped and reconfigured into 5 diverging stories set at midnight.

Stark, upward lighting intensifies the theatrics of the isolated figures, like they have been caught in the headlights of a car, or freeze-framed in the strobe lights of a dance floor. The hyper-colours that make up the figures and the depth of the blacks that envelop them having an effect like the trope in film where the main character has a sudden realisation or moment of clarity.” – Sean Edward Whelan

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Artist Biography

Sean Edward Whelan is a self-taught artist who engages in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture and digital animation to create his vibrant surrealist pieces.

After honing his own craft, Whelan studied graphic design at the University of Tasmania, where his interest in experimental computer-generated graphics and art birthed his early inspirations as a Fine Arts undergraduate student.

Graduating in 2002, he entered the local design industry and began working as an illustrator and animator eventually moving to Japan in 2005 to broaden his artistic prowess and hone his craft to gain greater mastery about how art made its way from eastern traditions into Western consciousness. Inspired, Sean began leveraging his design and illustration skills to pursue his own artistic practice, holding his first solo exhibition of self-directed artwork in regional Japan in 2008.

Over this period, Sean expanded his repertoire of techniques and subjects of interest, creating intricate artworks in pencil, traditional ink and watercolour with a focus on process and structure, analysing subjects immediate to his experience to more imaginative and expressive territories using vibrant acrylic on canvas, drawing on wider human experience, popular philosophy and contemporary social commentary in a colourful and accessible way.

Whelan’s subjectivity is one where anything is possible. He fervours futuristic realms that are anchored in a creative idea that can be challenging in the physical because their idiosyncrasy may seem more befitting in the energetic realm of infinite possibilities than in the concrete of tangible experience. It takes time to translate the artist’s work, as if molecule by molecule, as an ephemeral idea in your own imagination, existing first as pure energy then merging to a more static object or structure that exists in the three-dimensional world through Whelan’s interpretations.

Sean Edward Whelan has held a number of solo exhibitions and has participated in various group shows in Japan, the U.S., U.K. and Australia since 2008, and is currently working on a new body of work for an upcoming exhibition featuring in 2022.

Solo Exhibitions

2026 ‘Magical Thinking’ Outre Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2024 ‘Parade!’ Outre Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2023 ‘Midnight Vignettes’ Karen 19 Gallery, Gold Coast, Australia
2021 ‘Tension Point’ Honey Bones Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2018 ‘In the spirit of the Age’ Neospace Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2014 ‘A-Z’ Gallery Urukiyo, Joetsu City, Niigata Japan
2013 ‘Playing Statues’ Cake Wines Pop- Up, Melbourne, Australia
2011 ‘Visitor’ No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2010 ‘Sean Edward Whelan’ RitoruRaifu Mote, Joetsu City, Niigata Japan
2008 ‘Atypical’ Shimin Plaza Gallery, Joetsu City, Niigata Japan

Group Exhibitions

2026 ‘Return to Beauty’ (Beautiful Bizarre Magazine invitational) Outre Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2025 ‘Postcard (P.S) 9’ Nucleus House, Portland, US
2025 ‘Locals 2025’ Outre Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2025 ‘Psychedelicatessen’ Gallery ERGO, Seattle, US
2024 ‘Locals 2024’ Outre Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2023 ‘Antipodes’ Beinart Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2023 ‘Locals 2023’ Outre Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2023 ‘Coast Summer Group Show’ StupidKrap/Mint Art House, Sunshine Coast, Australia
2022 ‘Unnatural Histories Group Exhibition’, Antler Gallery, Portland US
2022 ‘Vanguard’, Outré Gallery, Melbourne Australia
2022 ‘Locals’ Outré Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2022 ‘Unatural Histories XI’, Antler Gallery, Oregon US
2021 ‘This One’s for You’ Melting Pot, Birmingham, UK
2020 ‘Locals’ Outré Gallery, Melbourne Australia
2019 ‘Southerns’ The All Story, Newcastle Australia
2017 ‘London Sketch Festival 2017’ The Archivist, London UK
2016 ‘F(L)ight’ Bristol, UK
2014 ‘Postcard Exhibition’ Spacewomb, New York US
2014 ‘Thank You Art’ Studio Zero, Myoko City, Niigata Japan
2014 ‘Hikaritokage’ for Tokyo, Tokyo Japan
2013 ‘Cake Wines 2013 Archi-Bottle Award’ Sydney, Australia
2013 ‘Thank You Art’ Studio Zero. Myoko City, Niigata Japan
2013 ‘Art on Paper’ Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Sydney Australia
2012 ‘100 Houses’ The Tobacco Factory, Bristol UK
2012 ‘Thank You Art’ Studio Zero, Myoko City, Niigata Japan
2012 ‘Monster Show 7’ Domy Books, Texas US
2011 ‘Monster Show 6’ Domy Books, Austin, Texas US
2011 ‘One Hundred’ Black Art Projects, Melbourne Australia
2011 ‘Thank You Art’ Studio Zero, Myoko City, Niigata Japan
2009 ‘Reunite & Transmute X Ghostpatrol’ No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne Australia

Awards

2018 Diemen Creative Industry Awards, Finalist
2013 Art on Paper, Hazelhurst Art Award, Finalist
2013 Cake Wines 2013 Archi-Bottle Award, Grand Prize

Other

2017 Cover Illustration, Wine & Spirits (Feb 2018 edition)
2016 Augmented Reality/Animation. Stuart Campbell & Prosthetic, Reality http://www.sutueatsflies.com/
2011 Character Design/Storyboarding, Ewan Macleod & Deerhoof, Secret Mobilization Video

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Exhibitions

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Artist Biography

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

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Work by Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

THE PARTY

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

THE DRESSING ROOM

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

NIGHT PARK

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

AN INVITATION

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

Rendezvous

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

HUNTERS IN MYTHOLOGY

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

ON THE WILD HUNT (PLAYING DEAD)

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

THE PHOENIX AND THE THIEF

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

DIONYSUS AND APOLLO

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

Ten Thousand Years of Happiness

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

The Tower

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

Brothers

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

Sleep Easy

Sean Edward Whelan – AUS

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