Mythologies – Petrina Hicks

Image: Petrina Hicks
Image: Petrina Hicks

Presenting some of the most significant and enduring works from Petrina Hicks' celebrated archive. The artist's work includes large-scale photographs that draw from mythology, fables, and historical art imagery to re-frame the contemporary female experience.

Permeated with a sense of magical realism, animals and females often appear together to represent aspects of psyche and identity, alluding to the complexity of female identity and the sentience of animals. 

Hicks is among Australia's most esteemed, globally recognised contemporary artists, having honed her distinctive photographic style and cemented her place at the forefront of her field over an extraordinary career spanning more than two decades. 

Mythologies also pairs Hicks's images with a series of sculptures by internationally celebrated WA-based artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, whose work similarly delights in chimerical forms, folkloric allusions, and beguiling encounters between humans and animals.

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah is an artist living and working on Wadjuk Nyungar country, in the Peel region of Western Australia. His practice explores the intersections of identity, culture and nature.

MYTHOLOGIES IS A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN MICHAEL REID SYDNEY + BERLIN, PERTH CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY, THE CITY OF PERTH + MOORE CONTEMPORARY

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August

Sydney: The exhibition delves into the State Library of NSW's vast collection of two million images, showcasing 400 photos – many displayed for the first time.

Canberra: The works by the 34 selected finalists provide a powerful visual record of the year, reflecting a particular time in Australian culture, both socially and artistically.

Sydney: The exhibition features over 90 photographs that shine a light on the astonishing array of flora, fauna and landscapes that can be found across the Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea bioregion.

Sydney: The exhibition brings together close to 100 of the artist’s most important works dating from the 1970s through to the present day.

Sydney: The photographs in Max Dupain: Student Life were taken at the University of Sydney in the early 1950s, a period of rapid change marked by the politics of the Cold War.

Sydney: First exhibited at the Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh) in 2023, ZAHALKAWORLD – an artist’s archive brings together key bodies of work from Zahalka’s renowned photographic practice.

September

Canberra: This collection-in-focus display highlights William Yang’s photography of Sydney Mardi Gras festivals between 1981 and 2003.

Melbourne: Featuring 50+ prints by some of the most important photographers of the 20th Century including Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, W Eugene Smith and Arnold Newman.