Image: Michelle Cawthorn when the lights come on 2015 - 2023, installation view. Photograph by Silversalt Photography.
1 December 2020 to 1 November 2023
Michelle Cawthorn is a multi-disciplinary artist based in southern Sydney, whose works invoke memory and personal experience through a unique visual language of repetitive mark making. Cawthorn’s practice is grounded in drawing, but intersects with painting, sculpture, and installation. Using memories of her life, childhood and relationships, she creates works that resonate with the viewer through abstracted but often recognisable forms. Of the work Cawthorn says:
‘When I was growing up, we knew it was time to head home from playing outdoors when the streetlights came on. The irregularity of this cubby shaped sculpture is intended to approximate the found nature of the materials that I used to make cubbyhouses with as a child.’
The work was first shown as part of Michelle Cawthorn’s solo exhibition Bittersweet, held at Hazelhurst from 17 October to 6 December 2015.