News

We are excited to share the Richard Lewer’s series ‘Adam and Eve’ will be presented as part of the 2023 Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria which launches on 3 December.

Richard Lewer’s work often depicts biblical references, drawing on signs and symbols deeply rooted in these narratives. His latest series, twelve large-scale paintings, depicts the biblical story of Adam and Eve, conjuring modern relevance to the moral tale of desire, shame and original sin. Lewer’s work probes what is beautiful and sinister without moralising. For ‘Adam and Eve’, Lewer interrogates the innate human instinct to revel, neglect, and ignore consequences at a time of uncertainty, changing global politics and climate crisis at a time when decline and demise are becoming the hallmarks of society.

Join artists Richard Lewer, Diana Al-Hadid, Heather B Swann, and NGV curator Tedd Gott for an artist talk on Sun 3 December, 2.15pm–2.45pm, around the themes of memory and magic explored in the artists' work.

The Triennial will be on display at the National Gallery of Victoria from 3 December 2023 to 7 April 2024. 

View Richard Lewer's 'Adam and Eve' series here. 

The exhibition Celebrating 15 Years of Hugo Michell Gallery will be open to the public from 21^st November to 9^th December 2023, celebrating the gallery’s represented artists:

Clara Adolphs, Narelle Autio, Sally Bourke, James Darling & Lesley Forwood, James Dodd, Marc Etherington, Zaachariaha Fielding, Tony Garifalakis, Bridie Gillman, David Booth [Ghostpatrol], Sam Gold, Lucas Grogan, Kate Just, Ildiko Kovacs, Janet Laurence, Richard Lewer, William Mackinnon, Fiona McMonagle, Trent Parke, Julia Robinson, Georgia Spain, Paul Sloan, Justine Varga, Garawan Wanambi, Sera Waters, Amy Joy Watson, Min Wong, Paul Yore.

Please note that the gallery will be closed on Saturday 18th November. 

Preview requests & enquiries | mail@hugomichellgallery.com

Julia Robinson is exhibiting in ‘From the other side’ at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) that launches this weekend.

Curated by Elyse Goldfinch and Jessica Clark, ‘From the other side’ brings together Australian and international artists to unsettle the tropes of the horror genre and its relationship to vulnerability, anxiety, rage, and revenge.

‘From the other side’ draws upon horror’s shared cultural imaginary and its ability to transgress and destabilise institutions of power, conjuring counternarratives and alternative mythologies that challenge the assumed boundaries of the body, gender, the self and the ‘other’.

Horror often speaks to the collective anxieties and fears of our times, from sexual liberation to new technologies, racial tension to gender subversion. This fear proliferates across shared cultural imaginaries to lay bare our innermost desires, tendencies for self-destruction and the conflicting impulses to confront and exorcise our darkest fantasies. Horror provides a language with which to be scared and to respond to challenges that might be beyond our control.  

From the other side brings together nineteen Australian and international artists, integrating historical and contemporary works, alongside key new commissions that draw upon horror’s capacity to transgress and destabilise forms of power and subjugation. The exhibition summons the impulse for rage and revenge, while embracing feelings of vulnerability and unease. Rather than speculating on the field of horror as a whole, the exhibition embeds and casts a lens upon feminist, queer and non-binary subjectivities to consider the transgressive pleasures and liberations of horror, as makers, masters and consumers of the genre. 

Centring the fear of the monstrous-feminine, the exhibition raises questions about the often-harmful representation of female monsters — the witch, the hag, the monstrous mother, the shapeshifter, the possessed woman — and how she has been reclaimed by female storytellers in recent years. The monstrous-feminine resists the prototypical role of women in horror, as either victims or final girls; instead she performs the dual roles of temptress and castrator — alluring yet repulsive, contaminating yet pure.  

The exhibition crosses the artificial parameters of horror in the everyday, as something that exists as part of society but also from outside of it. Culminating in a potent synthesis of dread, camp, humour and catharsis, From the other side challenges the traditional narratives and assumed boundaries of the body, gender, the self and the ‘other’. 

This exhibition will be open to the public from 9 December 2023 to 31 March 2024.

Hugo Michell Gallery are excited to return to Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, located at Booth F14 from 7th -10th September, 2023.

Presenting:
Richard Lewer
Trent Parke
Justine Varga
Sera Waters
Tony Garifalakis [Installation Contemporary]

Our booth presentation this year creates four distinctive spaces, with an immersive grotto of embroideries and hand-crafted sculptures by Sera Waters that dwell within the gaps of Australian histories to examine settler-colonial home-making patterns and practices. Richard Lewer’s take on the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ - pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth - is loaded with historical reference and surface lustre. Trent Parke’s photographic series ‘Monument’ revisits over 25 years of his most iconic street photography, presenting a single filmic narrative capturing the last moments on earth. Justine Varga’s intimate analogue photographs will seduce with deep colours and gestural marks that writhe across the surface. Tony Garifalakis' 'Scum Suite' engages with the ways in which the meaning of images, signs and symbols might be ascribed, conveyed or transformed in contemporary culture, and how conventional notions of hierarchy and status might be undermined. 

Sydney Contemporary, Australasia’s international art fair presents the country’s largest and most diverse gathering of local and international galleries.

Sera Waters, Justine Varga, Richard Lewer, Trent Parke for Hugo Michell Gallery at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, 2023. Photo by Document Photography. 

Register your interest to receive additional information regarding this presentation by emailing mail@hugomichellgallery.com