Mitch Cairns: Artist's Mouth

Over the last twenty years, Mitch Cairns has emerged as a major Australian painter of flair and originality. His playful work interweaves elements drawn from cubism, comics, and concrete poetry.

Artist's Mouth traces Cairns's artistic journey since graduating from the National Art School in Gadigal/Sydney twenty years ago in 2006, starting with a still life he painted in his last year at the School. Artist's Mouth is the most comprehensive presentation of his work to date. Curated by NAS Gallery Curator Lucy Latella and IMA Director Robert Leonard, the exhibition is a joint project with NAS Gallery, where it opened earlier this year.

Cairns is a cool, calculating, intellectual painter, with a sense of humour. His puzzle pictures play games with pictorial conventions and conundrums—duck/rabbit problems. He scrambles 3D forms and 2D ones, detailed forms and schematic ones. Like a classic cubist, his subject is sometimes hidden—it's not always immediately clear what we're looking at.