Yanni Pounartzis (b. Canberra) is a Canberra-based Artist working in a range of artistic disciplines. His vibrant paintings and inventive public installations attract a wide audience including prominent galleries, private collectors and city councils.

Yanni is best known for his vivid, hard-edge oil paintings and ‘Big Swoop’, a magpie sculpture feeding on a chip, in Canberra’s city centre. Big Swoop is a Canberra and national icon and is now included in the list of ‘Aussie Big Things’. On the 4th September 2023, The Royal Australian Mint and Australia Post released a Big Swoop collectible coin and stamp, sold nationally and in circulation as legal currency.

Yanni’s other major public artworks include: ‘Vineyards’, ‘Pedestrian Strips’ and ‘Geometric Shadows’. In June 2023, the mural ‘No Name Lane’ for the Queanbeyan Palerang Regional Council won the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects Small Projects and Regional Achievement Award. The judges said the project transformed bland alleyways into visually rich and safer public spaces with a distinct sense of place and local identity.

As a visual artist, Yanni has exhibited in many reputable galleries and his paintings are held in private collections around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Sydney and Melbourne.

Yanni is currently represented by Studio Gallery Group and works from his studio in Canberra.

He’s nowhere near as dry as this bio.