Vito Manfredi

About

Meet Vito Manfredi

About

Vito Manfredi is a contemporary Australian artist whose work spans sculpture, drawing, and digital painting. Based in Brisbane, he has been exhibiting since the early 1980s, with work selected for important prizes including the Robert Jacks Drawing Prize. He was included in the inaugural Notfair (2010), curated by Sam Leach, Tony Lloyd, and Ashley Crawford, and in The Retrieved Object (2000), curated by Elizabeth Gower.

A founding member of the Chameleon Artist Run Space in Hobart, Vito later managed Stripp Gallery in Melbourne and worked as editor of The Spot, an arts community television program. He has exhibited in New York, Berlin, Sydney, Melbourne, and Hobart, with solo exhibitions such as Delirium (Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne, 2008) and We Love You (Esa Jäske Gallery, Sydney, 2006).

Living and working in Brisbane since 2010, Vito continues to develop a practice that challenges perceptions of the body, materiality, and transformation.

Vito Manfredi

Artist Statement

I work across sculpture, drawing, and digital painting. Each medium offers a different way of thinking and seeing, yet all of them circle around the same concerns: the body, its parts, its provisional arrangements, and the strange systems that emerge when fragments are brought together.

My practice is often described as uncanny, and I welcome that. I like the tension between attraction and repulsion, humour and unease. A drawing might feel playful at first glance, then suggest something unsettling. A sculpture might appear familiar and bodily, yet slip into something altogether otherworldly. I think of this as creating openings – moments where perception wavers, and something new can be glimpsed.

Philosophy has always run alongside my work. I am drawn to the writings of thinkers such as Deleuze and Guattari, and to older sources like Empedocles, who imagined body parts wandering the earth in search of connection. My works often take that idea literally: hands, mouths, organs, or hybridised figures meeting and mutating into new forms.

Over the years I have also found inspiration in cultural traditions such as mudras – the symbolic hand gestures used in dance, ritual, and meditation. These gestures suggest a language of the body that moves between the physical and the spiritual, which is something I am always chasing in my own work.

At heart, my art is a way of asking questions. What happens when we reorganise what we think of as fixed? Can we imagine new organisms, new combinations, new possibilities? If the result makes you laugh and shudder at the same time, I feel I am on the right track.

Vito Manfredi

CV & Exhibitions

Vito Manfredi’s career spans over four decades of artistic practice, with an extensive exhibition history across Australia and internationally. His CV includes solo and group exhibitions, curatorial projects, and recognition through major art prizes and publications. The following record highlights his ongoing engagement with contemporary art communities and his contribution to Australia’s visual arts landscape.

solo exhibitions

2007 Conference

Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne

2006 We Love You

Esa Jäske Gallery, Sydney

2006 Big Drawings in a Small Room

GALLERY twenty-four, Berlin, Germany

2002 Intersection

Eisenberg Gallery, Melbourne

1999 Steady State Drawing Exhibition

Stripp Gallery, Melbourne

1997 The Happy Wanderer

Ether Ohntitel, Melbourne

1986 Minimal Self

Chameleon Gallery, Hobart

group exhibitions

2007 Conference

Jenny Port Gallery, Melbourne

2006 We Love You

Esa Jäske Gallery, Sydney

2006 Big Drawings in a Small Room

GALLERY twenty-four, Berlin, Germany

2002 Intersection

Eisenberg Gallery, Melbourne

1999 Steady State Drawing Exhibition

Stripp Gallery, Melbourne

1997 The Happy Wanderer

Ether Ohntitel, Melbourne

1986 Minimal Self

Chameleon Gallery, Hobart

Awards

1986

Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board Grant

1985

Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board Grant

Bibliography

1986

Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board Grant

1985

Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board Grant

Selected Press & Reception

1986

Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board Grant

1985

Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board Grant