He has spent time in Japan, Papua New Guinea, France, Austria, and Hungary, returning to Australia in the 1980s.
[1] He was a founding member of the Ubu Films collective in the late 1960s, with whom he made numerous experimental film works,[1] and he also worked for the ABC[clarification needed] as an editor, cartoonist, filmmaker and scenic painter before his first major solo exhibition with Watters Gallery in Sydney.
[citation needed] During a residency at the Karolyi Foundation, in Vence in southern France, he met Hungarian sculptor Judith Englert, and spent a year in Budapest with her before returning to Australia.
Shead became interested in Lawrence after he came across letters by the author while on an expedition with the ABC to the Sepik Highlands in Papua New Guinea in 1968.
[citation needed] The 21st century saw him branch out into a complex set of paintings celebrating the Ern Malley series of hoax poems.