Synopsis
Basil Hadley was born in London in 1940 and arrived in Australia in 1964. He studied at the Ealing College of Art, London, and the Prahran College of Advanced Education but is mainly self-taught as an artist. Hadley is best known for his stylish depictions of the outback and works both as a painter and printmaker. He had his first one-man exhibition in London's Parkway Gallery when he was only 21 and his first Australian show at the Manyung Gallery in Mount Eliza, Victoria. Since then he has held individual exhibitions on an annual basis, at galleries in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Hobart, Adelaide and Townsville. He has also featured in a number of overseas exhibitions, including the Australian and New Zealand Printmakers Exhibition which toured New Zealand in 1975-76, the Australian Print Exhibition, Tokyo and Fiji, 1977, the 14th International Grand Prix of Contemporary Art, Monte Carlo 1979, the Australian Prints Exhibition shown in Sweden in 1980 and Singapore in 1982, and the Seoul International Print Biennale in Korea, 1983.
Among his many prizes are the Bunbury Purchase Prize, 1974, the Gold Coast City Art Prize, 1977 and 1984, the Bathurst Art Prize, 1979, the George Gatton Memorial Print Prize, 1979, the Broken Hill Art Prize, 1981, and the City of Elizabeth Watercolour Prize, 1982. He was nominated in 1984 for the BHP Award for the Pursuit of Excellence and has received several major commissions - among them works for the Sheraton Hotels in Alice Springs and Darwin, the State Bank of South Australia's branches in London and Hong Kong, and the Commonwealth Bank in South Australia. Hadley is represented in the Australian National Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Queensland Art Gallery and numerous regional galleries around the country. He is also included in many institutional and corporate collections in Australia and overseas.
