Art Forum: Exhibition floor talk with Lucy Latella

Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth is a major survey exhibition of work by Sydney-based artist and NAS alum Mitch Cairns. Co-curated by Lucy Latella, NAS Curator, Exhibitions, and Robert Leonard, IMA Director, this will be the largest and most comprehensive presentation of Cairns’ work to date. It celebrates his twenty-year artistic career since graduating from the National Art School in 2006 and marks the 20^th anniversary of the NAS Gallery.

The exhibition features key works from Cairns’ oeuvre – including paintings, works on paper, sculpture, and concrete poetry, highlighting his distinctive modernist sensibility, playful abstraction, and reductive approach to form. Spanning two decades, the exhibition traces his evolving influences: from early student work to recent commissions, reflecting his ongoing engagement with self-reflection, the poetics and banality of daily life, concrete poetry, language and text, and significant figures in art and literature.

Join co-curator Lucy Latella for a floor talk and a tour of the exhibition. 

Image: Image: Mitch Cairns, Artist’s Mouth. 2019, oil on linen, collection of Elaine Baker and John Cruthers, Sydney, image courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney © the artist, photograph: The Commercial