A Living, Breathing Gallery

acrylic on canvas

Christina Zimpel’s distinct colourful, graphic style of portraiture is inspired by an eclectic mix of references including classical Greek and Roman coiffure (hair arrangements), 1950s pin-up girl calendars, as well as her memories of the 1960s and ’70s colourways and print designs and love of the rock band The Fauves. Both commissioned for MECCA Bourke Street, Blue Turtleneck (Mega) and Special Occasion (Mega) are the largest paintings Zimpel has created to date, and were physically challenging to produce, with the artist spending much of her time up a ladder! She notes: “My choice of colours are riotous, but I enjoy that the subjects remain serene and dignified.”

– CD

polyurethane, synthetic hair, steel, mechanism

Patricia Piccinini explores what it means to be human in a technological age. Employing materials as diverse as silicone and fibreglass, plastic and human hair, she creates fantastical sculptures that are as informed by surrealism, mythology and science as they are by art. Sensuous Gyre is one of her more minimal works: a suspended rotating sculpture that, with its long pink hair, suggests an uncanny being, doomed to spin without ever being revealed. The artist says: “My work aims to shift the way that people look at the world around them and question their assumptions about the relationships they have with the world.”¹

– JH

acrylic on Japanese paper

Judith Wright’s eclectic visual language emerged from her experience as a dancer with The Australian Ballet. In this work, the leg, shimmering in a white stocking, hovers en pointe over the silhouette of a large head – the embodiment, perhaps, of a sudden, or second, thought. Wright says, “All of my practice has a strong sense of theatricality, of oppositional forces, of light and dark, of shadow and memory and loss.” ²

–JH

oil on board

Although best known as a landscape painter, Sally Ross has long been interested in portraiture – and has been an Archibald Prize finalist six times. Her distinctively flattened and patterned surfaces, interest in costume and coiffure and delicate use of colour and line emerged from influences as varied as Renaissance painting, modernism and police mug shots. She has described the act of painting subjects from life [and from art and cultural history] as filled with a “strange intimacy, awkwardness and thrill”.³

– JH

hand-blown Pyrex glass made in collaboration with artisan, Pietro Viero, brass, steel, stainless steel suspension and fittings, electrical components

Grand Criss Cross Kite is a continuation of Bethan Laura Wood’s ‘criss cross’ language developed with specialist Pyrex glass artisan, Pietro Viero. The influence for the dynamic floating hexagon chandelier commissioned for MECCA Bourke Street is described by Wood as; “it has travelled from the Aztec and Mayan layered temples of Mexico to Tokyo and its kite museum”, reflecting the designer’s wide ranging refences and inspiration. The long, clear pipes of Pyrex are suspended by wire cables and brass bracing to create an open column, while the ‘bloom’ of hand-blown, coloured Pyrex echoes the graphic eye from Koinobori (kite) streamers. Bethan Laura Wood was recipient of the 2023 MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission. The five-year series is supported by MECCA through M-Power, which aims to champion and elevate women in art and design.

– CD

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Heather B. Swann has said: “The recognition that we are mysterious to ourselves is the driving force for me as an artist.” In Oh lover, hold me close - The sound of the rock garden a crouching figure looks out with bright, curious eyes, enclosed by flat blocks of terracotta and green colour in which scarlet flowers float. Meaning here is open-ended: it could be a study of introspection and delight, a portrayal of claustrophobia or something else altogether. How you read it is up to you.

– JH

cibachrome print

For the nine images that comprise Persona and Shadow, Julie Rrap photographed herself interpreting famous paintings of women by artists including Edvard Munch and Édouard Manet. She made the series after visiting exhibitions in Europe in the early 1980s and recognising that they rarely included the work of women artists. Also inspired by Jean Genet’s semi-autobiographical novel The Thief’s Journal (1949) the artist explains: “I used it [the novel] as a metaphor for what I was doing with art history – I wasn’t invited, so I had to break in and look around.”⁵

– JH

welded steel, exterior epoxy modelling compound, exterior acrylic paint

Nabilah Nordin is known for her sculptural assemblages including ones made from discarded furnishings and building materials, which she coats in plaster and paints in bright colours. These idiosyncratic sculptural forms connect us to the artist’s studio as a space of creative abundance and potentiality. Interval is one of a new series of works made in steel that she has bent, welded, coated and painted, to explore sculpture as more fluid ‘line drawings in space’. While more refined, Nordin continues to tap into the power of creative experimentation and to take her chosen medium to its most playful edge.

– CD

Ilford smooth pearl print

Atong Atem combines references to both her South Sudanese heritage and her life in Australia. Influenced by eminent Malian artists Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta, who popularised African studio portrait photography in the ’50s and ’60s, Atem turns the lens on herself as way of exploring myriad narratives, from the personal to the political. In these highly stylised, vibrantly coloured self-portraits, Atem pictures herself as a radiant, enigmatic being, posed against dreamy, multi-layered backdrops, which speak to the co-existence of an idiosyncratic spirituality and the complex realities of migration. Atem was recipient of the 2018 MECCA M-Power Scholarship.

– JH