Art Forum: 20 Years of Image Making – Mitch Cairns in conversation with curator Lucy Latella

In association with his major survey exhibition Artist’s Mouth at NAS Gallery, Mitch Cairns will reflect on his studies at the National Art School and share about his experience developing his practice and establishing himself as a professional artist over the past two decades. Together with exhibition co-curator Lucy Latella, he will reflect on the process of developing his survey exhibition and looking back at his oeuvre at this point in his career.

A joint project by NAS Gallery and Institute of Modern Art, Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth is 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 paintings, works on paper, sculpture, and concrete poetry, highlighting Cairns’ distinctive modernist sensibility, playful abstraction, and reductive approach to form. The exhibition traces his evolving influences over two decades: from 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.

Installation view: Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth, National Art School Gallery, Sydney, 2026, image courtesy and © the artist, photograph: Zan Wimberley