Derek Kreckler (Sydney, 1952) works with performance, film, photography, installation and video. He has regularly created tough insistent imagery that has been at the critical edge of Australian art history and which has provided comments on our countries past, present and future. The art of Derek Kreckler is often described as ‘unsettling’ and ‘dangerous’. Whether relishing the risk of experimentation and chance, or purposefully challenging our perceptions of country, identity and self, Kreckler’s works flirt with uncertainty, and open our eyes to the magic of how images are made, the murkiness of nationhood and its perpetuation, and the wonder of how powerful the landscape can be. His works have much to share about art history, social relations, popular culture and environment. Kreckler offers conceptual and expressive forms that are commanding yet spacious, sufficiently suggestive to allow us to generate worlds around them.
Derek Kreckler studied sculpture at the South Australian School of Visual Arts before completing a Master of Arts (Visual Arts) at the Sydney College of the Arts. In 2012 he was awarded a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong. Kreckler spent 1991-1992 as a participant in the MoMA PS1 artist residency program in New York and was awarded a New Media Arts Board Fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2000. Parallel to the production of his art Derek Kreckler has continued to teach within art schools. In 2007 he returned to the east coast to work at the University of Wollongong in the Faculty of Creative Arts. He has taught at diverse universities in Australia.