Austin Pratt, MFA

Curator & Manager, University Galleries; Faculty and Program Assistant, MFA-Interdisciplinary Art Program; Instructor, Studio Art
Austin Pratt
he, him, his

Summary

Austin Pratt is an artist, curator, and educator. His work exists primarily through a studio painting practice and as the frontman for the collective psych/hardcore-punk outfit Spitting Image, which he cofounded in 2010. Not wholly dissimilar, Pratt’s music, poetic writing, and paintings reprocess fragmented image and pattern, with interest in perception psychology and ecology.

Pratt is currently the Curator and Manager of Sheppard Contemporary & University Galleries at UNR. He has worked widely in curatorial and exhibitions management, serving as Director of Gallery 1010 in Knoxville, Tennessee, as Gallery Coordinator and Public Art Tech for the City of Reno, as Permanent Collections Assistant at the University of Nevada, and in much independent work as an art handler and curator. In 2018 he co-curated the exhibition “Side-Eye: Visions of Periphery” for the Spring/Break Art Show in Times Square, NYC. At UNR he has curated the group exhibitions “Toward a Tangled Turn: Knots, Nets, Threads, & Loops”, and “Alkali Syllabi” in addition to managing student and community based exhibitions programming.

As an artist, Pratt was recipient of the Nevada Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship, and his work has been featured in New American Paintings magazine. His work has been shown widely, including Baitball Art Fair in Italy, and solo exhibitions at Channel to Channel Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee, Ewing Gallery at the University of Tennessee, and at Oats Park Art Center in Fallon, Nevada, among others.

Pratt teaches courses at UNR in Painting, Drawing, Gallery Practices, and Graduate Seminars in Contemporary Theory and Practice. He is also Teaching Faculty and Program Assistant for the low-residency MFA program in Interdisciplinary Art at UNR-Lake Tahoe.

Selected exhibitions

Solo

  • 2022 Array Hum: Great Basin National Park, Artist-in-Residence. Front Door Gallery, Lilley Museum of Art. UNR.
  • 2021 To Territory Tile. Depot Gallery. Sierra Arts Foundation. Reno, Nevada.
  • 2020 A Gate, Wild, Breathing. Oats Park Art Center. Fallon, Nevada.
  • 2019 Weeping Laughing Song. With Tom Wixo. Holland Project Gallery. Reno, Nevada.
  • 2018 Some Openings. Ewing Gallery. University of Tennessee. Knoxville, Tennessee.
  • 2018 Not This, Not This. Channel to Channel. Nashville, Tennessee.
  • 2017 Laced. Sheppard Contemporary, University Museum Galleries. UNR.
  • 2016 Skip Tracer. Gallery 1010. Knoxville, Tennessee.

Group

  • 2023 Between Earth and Sky. Curated by Rossitza Todorova. Metro Gallery. Reno, NV.
  • 2022 Small Works. Soft Times Gallery. San Francisco, CA.
  • 2022 Holding Pattern. Curated by Nick Larsen. Holland Project Galleries. Reno, NV.
  • 2021 Baitball Art Fair. With Window Mine Gallery. Palazzo San Giuseppe. Polignano a Mare, Italy.
  • 2020 Blessing in Disguise. Saint Maison Gallery. Virtual exhibition organized in London/Tokyo.
  • 2020 Valley of the Sun. Holland Project Galleries. Reno, NV.
  • 2020 The Jobe Collection: 15 Years. Channel to Channel. Nashville, TN.
  • 2019 The Village and The Forest. Great Mother Conference. Portland, ME.
  • 2019 Welcome to Hell. Ironwood Gallery. Knoxville, TN.
  • 2018 Orange. Coagula Curatorial. Los Angeles, CA.
  • 2017 Mall Walker. Curated by Ezra Tessler. Abandoned Foot Locker, Knoxville Center Mall. Knoxville, TN.
  • 2017 Orange. Unix Gallery Chelsea. New York, NY.
  • 2016 Skull: 4th Biennial Exhibition. Curated by Chris Bauder. Sahara West Gallery. Las Vegas, NV.
  • 2016 A Closed-Mouth Canticle, À Baratear. Clarice Lispector Festival. The Central Collective. Knoxville, TN.
  • 2016 No Beer Here. Gallery 1010. Knoxville, TN.
  • 2016 When Words Were Like Magic. Great Mother Conference. Portland, ME.
  • 2016 Peach. The Growlery. San Francisco, CA.
  • 2015 Hi. Downtown Gallery. Knoxville, TN.
  • 2015 Plaza Promenade. Sandbox Studio Gallery. Los Angeles, CA
  • 2014 Bathed in Sunshine, Covered in Dust (with Dane Haman). Holland Project Gallery. Reno, NV.
  • 2013 Casual Sex Happy Hour. Sub-MISSION Gallery. San Francisco, CA.
  • 2012 Dead Air/Forbidden Fruit. Arlene Francis Center. Santa Rosa, CA.

Publications

  • New American Paintings. No. 144, West Issue. Juried by Rebecca Matalon, Curator, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Edited by Steven T. Zevitas. Open Studios Press: Boston. October/November 2019.
  • Austin J. Pratt: A Gate, Wild, Breathing. 64 pages. Oats Park Art Center. February 2020.
  • Weeping Laughing Song: Collaborative Drawings by Austin Pratt & Tom Wixo. 48 pages. HP Galleries. August 2019.
  • Discography as Spitting Image:
    • "Full Sun" 33rpm LP. Slovenly Recordings. 2023
    • "Not This, Not This". C-30 cassette EP. 2019
    • "Icon Alive" C-30 cassette EP. Casino Trash Records.
    • "Love on a Terror" 7" 45rpm EP. 2013
    • "Live at Recycled Records". C-30 cassette. 2012
    • "Valley Floor". 7" 45rpm EP. 2011
    • "Spitting Image/Thee Indoors". Split C-30 cassette. 2011

Courses taught

  • Gallery Practices
  • Painting I
  • Drawing I
  • Drawing II
  • Drawing III
  • Intermediate Drawing
  • Advanced Drawing
  • Interdisciplinary Drawing
  • MFA Focused Studio Practices
  • MFA Studio Mentorship
  • MFA Contemporary Theory & Practice

Education

  • MFA, Painting & Drawing, University of Tennessee
  • BFA, Painting, University of Nevada, Reno