Normana Wight was born in Melbourne in 1936. From 1954-1957, and 1968+1970 she studied Painting and Printmaking at RMIT and in 2000 completed a M.A. from Southern Cross University at Lismore.
Wight worked at various things, until taking up teaching art in 1967, when she started lecturing at PIT in Melbourne, mostly art history and painting then gradually shifting into printmaking. A position she held until 1981 when she was appointed printmaking lecturer at USQ, Toowoomba, Queensland. Wight lives and works in Brisbane.
One of three women artists included in the celebrated 1968 ‘Field’ exhibition held at the National Gallery of Victoria which was also exhibited at the AGNSW. Wight has held solo exhibitions since 1966 including at Pinacotheca, Crossley and Powell St. in Melbourne, Central St. in Sydney, Curwen Gallery in London, and since 1990 has exhibited at grahame galleries + editions in Brisbane.
Wight has been included in many Print Council of Australia exhibitions and in “Graphic Identity’ at Queensland Art Gallery, and lately, some artists book exhibitions.
In 1986-7 she held a residency at Peacock Printmakers in Aberdeen, Scotland and was Visiting Fellow at Queensland College of Art in 1993. A four-month residency at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in 2001 followed a collaboration with the workshop on a portrait of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
Wight’s work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and National Library of Australia in Canberra, State and regional gallery collections and private collections.
The artist’s work has always been about colour and a diary of everyday existence, even when non-figurative. From painting the artist turned to screenprinting and eventually to digital prints on paper or canvas. Her Postcards project started in 1974, continued until 1991 and was resumed in 2007. Produced in editions of between 20 and 40 as through-the-post art works they were not only a reaction to the commercial gallery system but also include a sense of time and interaction to the work. Artist’s books first appeared in 1987 and have continued since.
Wight’s exhibition in 2009 at grahame galleries + editions, her fifth with the gallery, brought together nearly all of the artist’s books and related prints as well as the postcards from a period of 34 years.