Adriano Gemelli was born in Melbourne Australia to a family of Italian heritage. He started his art career living and studying at the Dunmoochin artist colony with Clifton Pugh in the early seventies.  Gemelli was one of the few to obtain a studio at the art colony and spent seven years there cutting his artist teeth during the seventies. He produced prints for Cliff Pugh and worked on his own paintings while absorbing the influences of some of Australia’s best artists such as Fred Williams, John Olsen, Frank Werther, John Perceval, and Frank Hodgkinson who also frequented the colony.

After a successful exhibition at Dunmoochin, Gemelli traveled to Europe in 1976 where he studied fumed glass and iridescence, Islamic art, mosaics in Greece, and tile production in Turkey, and went to Spain to study Goya and Gaudi.

Several solo exhibitions of paintings followed, in both New South Wales and Victoria, and he became a committee member of the Victorian Contemporary Art Centre for five years then in the early eighties became the Chairman of the Victorian Artworkers’ Union. In 1984 he became a member of the UNESCO Steering Committee, International Association of Artists.

In 1983 he created a large-scale mosaic wall at Glendonald School for deaf children as part of the Victorian Ministry of the Arts, Artists in Schools program. Measuring 18m x 6m the mosaic wall was constructed of mirror, black glass, fumed glass, etched glass, acrylic and metals. Other major sculptural works are the War memorial at Frankston and Dandenong.  In 1984 he was appointed Art Co-ordinator – Consultant to Victoria’s 150th Celebrations in conjunction with the Ministry for the Arts, Victoria, and took up various teaching and lecturing positions. In 1992 he was invited to exhibit in a group exhibition “Ruebens and the Italian Renaissance” at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Adriano created an artist-run gallery – Kelly & Gemelli Art & Design – with his partner Lynne Kelly in 2012 at San Remo Vic which, over the past 10 years, has presented multiple exhibitions of various artists along with Adriano’s work, giving him the opportunity to explore his creative approaches to the many varied series which, over the course of his career he has repeatedly sought out ways to express his artistic approach to become singularly individual.

A number of grants and support also have been achieved from several funding bodies

Webstite – Adriano Gemelli