Image by Nolan Verheij
Angus McDonald is an award-winning artist and documentary filmmaker.
After graduating with an Economics degree at the University of Sydney, McDonald studied painting at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney, winning the school's Brett Whiteley Scholarship in 1994. He continued his studies at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy in 1999 & 2000.
Since 1995, he’s staged more than 30 solo exhibitions across Australia & internationally. In 2007 he travelled to Antarctica as the expedition artist for the Mawson’s Huts Foundation and returned there in 2009.
McDonald has been a frequent finalist in numerous national art awards including Australia’s biggest art competition, the Archibald Prize, where he has been selected as a finalist on seven occasions. In 2024, his portrait of Indigenous academic & writer, Professor Marcia Langton AO received the Archibald Prize’s People’s Choice Award. It was the second time McDonald had won the People’s Choice, also receiving the award in 2020 for his portrait of Kurdish Iranian writer and filmmaker, Behrouz Boochani.
His work is held in private and public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Gallery of NSW
In 2017, McDonald created a film project to advocate for more humanitarian approaches to managing the welfare of forcibly displaced people. Named Howling Eagle the project comprised a series of short films & interviews about current refugee and asylum seeker approaches that he filmed in Australia, Jordan, Lebanon and Greece
In 2019, McDonald directed & produced his first film, “MANUS”, a documentary short about refugees & asylum seekers held for years under brutal conditions by the Australian federal government on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The documentary centred on testimonials of numerous men held offshore, secretly filmed by Walkley award-winning journalist Olivia Rousset.
MANUS won multiple awards and nominations at film festivals in Australia and internationally for both Best Documentary and Best Direction. MANUS also qualified for selection at the 2020 Academy Awards in the Documentary short category.
In 2023, he co-produced and directed his first feature project. The documentary, titled “Freedom Is Beautiful”, was supported by Amnesty International & premiered at the 2023 Sydney International Film Festival. It was awarded Best Documentary at the 2023 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival and Best Film, Honourable Mention at the 2023 Byron Bay International Film Festival. It tells the story of two Kurdish refugees who were held for 8 years by the Federal Government under its hard-line offshore processing policy. McDonald co-produced the project with award-winning French film producer, Mélita Toscan Du Plantier.
McDonald is a committee member of Human Rights Watch Australia.
His next solo exhibition, “UNHINGED” will be held in 2025
He lives with his family in Lennox Head, in northern NSW.
Find him on Twitter and Instagram at @angusmcz
www.angusmcdonald.com.au
For enquiries, projects & acquistions, please contact Carly Frankham at angusmcdonaldstudio@gmail.com
