The National Art School (NAS) and the Institute of Modern Art (IMA) are proud to present Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth, 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 20th anniversary of the NAS Gallery.
The exhibition will feature key works from Cairns’ oeuvre – including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and artist publications – highlighting his distinctive modernist sensibility, playful abstraction, and reductive approach to form. Spanning two decades, the exhibition traces his evolving influences: from early student works to recent and new 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.
Cairns has exhibited at major institutions across Australia, including the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State at the Art Gallery of South Australia (2022), The National: New Australian Art at Carriageworks, Sydney (2021), and his recent solo exhibition Restless Legs at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2025). His works are held in significant national collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, National Portrait Gallery, and Monash University Museum of Art, as well as private collections in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States.
He was awarded the Archibald Prize in 2017 and the Brett Whiteley Traveling Art Scholarship in 2012. Cairns has also contributed to the field as curator of Primavera 2019: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and as judge of the 2022 Brett Whiteley Traveling Art Scholarship. He is represented by The Commercial Gallery, Sydney.
Cairns has produced several artist books and serial publications, including Pebble (2021–ongoing), with Mitchel Cumming), Selected Scuffs (2021), The Reader’s Voice (2015) and Dip or Skinny Dip (2014). In addition to his studio practice, Cairns founded and curated exhibition programs ANKLES (2018–21) and Cellar Door (2023–ongoing).
