Artist Biography 2023
Zorica Purlija migrated age 8 from Montenegro, to Australia in1972, and is currently based in Sydney.
Graduating with Distinction in 1989 with an Associate Diploma in graphic design and photography at The University of Western Sydney, Zorica spent some years travelling through Europe, experiencing life and art. For the last twenty years she has been practicing as a fine art photographer while raising her family and in July 2020 she completed her Masters of Art in photo media, at the UNSW School of Art and Design.
Her current practice has been focused around attachments, the psychology and space around our primary relationships and how it impacts our future self. Her art is informed by feminist values and hopes to tap into our universal longings for equality.
She continues to exhibit widely, and her public profile continues to build, including internationally, exhibiting in Manhattan, Zurich, and Venice. This year she has been a finalist in the Head-on Photography Award, The Wyndham art Prize, the Ravenswood Women’s Art Award, and the Gosford Art Prize.
Zorica is Represented by Stanley Street Gallery: stanleystreetgallery.com.au/exhibitions/solace
Artist Statement 2021
Fade Into You 2021
In this series my desire is to reclaim the wholeness we are born with in Nature, a symbiosis forgotten about with the progress of modernization. The figure and landscape are one, both reveling in the beauty of each other.
The landscape here is of a place imbued with body, memory and life itself.
“Landscape is not only an aesthetic category, but a site where individual and collective memories are inscribed: by destroying it, we may deprive ourselves of our identities.”
Rosario Assunto ‘s Philosophy of Landscape.
Web: www.zoricapurlija.com.au
Instagram: @zorica_purlija
