Snakes and mirrors
23 November 2024 – 16 February 2025
Museum of Australian Photography
Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin
Media Release
Sydney Contemporary 2024
Carriageworks, Sydney
Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin
Mythologies
16 Aug—27 Sep 2024
Perth Council House Gallery, Western Australia
Abdul-Rahman Abdullah + Petrina Hicks
Curator Connie Petrillo, The City of Perth
Co-presented by Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin
Perth Centre for Photography
Mythologies 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.
Earth, Sea and Sky
Australian Contemporary Photography
Bondi Pavillion Gallery, Bondi
9 December 2023 - 21 January 2024
RIFUGIO DIGITALE, Florence, Italy.
PETRINA HICKS: MYTHOLOGIES
catalogue essay
20 July - 3 September, 2023
After exploring the diverse concept of SuperNatural, stemming from the need to reflect on the dialogue between natural and artificial in the era of the Anthropocene, the cycle conceived by Irene Alison draws to its conclusion with the Mythologies exhibition by Petrina Hicks, a retrospective look at the work of the Australian photographer, exhibited in Italy for the first time.
Gloss, 2011, video, 6 mins
Art Gallery of NSW, Australia
Artists in Conversation
Robbie Buck and Petrina Hicks
6pm-7pm, 17 May 2023
The 67th Blake Prize
CASULA POWERHOUSE ARTS CENTRE
March 12 - May 22, 2022
MICHAEL REID Sydney
Petrina Hicks polaroids
February 17 - March 13, 2022
Containing over 400 individual images, Polaroids is an illustrative survey of Petrina Hicks’ studio methods.
THE BODY ELECTRIC
22 June 2020 - 26 January 2021
The National Gallery of Australia
The Body Electric features works by Lynda Benglis | Polly Borland | Pat Brassington | Sophie Calle | Jo Ann Callis | Charis (and George Schwarz) | Cheryl Donegan | Christine Godden | Nan Goldin | Petrina Hicks | Mayumi Hosokura | Claire Lambe | Pixy Liao | Anne McDonald | Annette Messager | Tracey Moffatt | Momo Okabe | Lillian O’Neil | Fiona Pardington | Carolee Schneemann | Collier Schorr | Cindy Sherman | Annie Sprinkle | Lyndal Walker | Francesca Woodman
Venus, 2013-2019, backlit transparent film (lightbox) 118.5 x 118.5cm
GOTHIQUE BLANC
Australian Embassy, Paris
24 June - 30 September 2021
Ambassade d’Australie en France
4 Rue Jean Rey
75015 Paris 15
France
Petrina Hicks: Gothique Blanc brings together works made between 2003 and 2019, as part of ‘Australia Now’. Gothique Blanc is the first international exhibition of Petrina Hicks’ major mid-career survey show, Bleached Gothic, which exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2019.
PETRINA HICKS
BLEACHED GOTHIC
27 September, 2019 - 15 March, 2020
National Gallery of Victoria
Petrina Hicks: Bleached Gothic is the first major survey exhibition of photographer Petrina Hicks. Over her fifteen-year career, Hicks (1972– ) has gained a strong reputation for her large-scale, hyperreal photographs that subvert and disrupt the photographic language of advertising and portraiture. Hicks photographs children, animals and young women against simple backgrounds, returning to the same models and motifs frequently to define and hone her distinctive style.
Hicks’s photographs are notable for their duality; pristine and benign at first glance, the works are undercut with a sense of the uncanny. The tension between seduction and danger, familiarity and strangeness, intimacy and distance are present in many of Hicks’s works, which are rich with mythological and historical symbolism.
BLEACHED GOTHIC
MONOGRAPH
National Gallery of Victoria published monograph Petrina Hicks: Bleached Gothic includes more than fifty photographs and video works spanning the period 2003 to 2019. Seen together for the first time, Hicks’s shimmering, enigmatic and surreal compositions convey the inherent ambiguity and complexity of the female experience. At a time when issues of gender and representation are more culturally relevant than ever before, Hicks’s photographs interrogate the cultural and visual representation of women and children in contemporary society and throughout history.
BEAUTIFUL BIZARRE
ISSUE 28, March 2020
In our exclusive in-depth interview with Australian analogue photographer Petrina Hicks, she reveals how her interest in the animal-human relationship is captured in her work as the “otherness” – the boundary between the human and non human animal.
GIRL ON GIRL
Photography in the Age
of the Female Gaze
Charlotte Jansen, November, 2019
Young female artists are using photography and social media to explore issues of female identity. This gorgeous book introduces 40 of them, in an investigation of photography and the female gaze. Features work by: Amanda Charchian, Lalla Essaydi, Petrina Hicks, Pixy Liao, Zanele Muholi, Pinar Yolaçan.
SUBLIME SEA
RAPTURE AND REALITY
14 Dec 2019 - 23 Feb 2020
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
The exhibition creates a new ‘cabinet of curiosities’, combining art and the natural sciences to chart the evolution of a ‘sublime’ perception of nature and the sea’s benevolence as a primal source of life, including photographic works by Todd McMillan | Anne Zahalka | Petrina Hicks | Tamara Dean
Venus, 2013, pigment print, 100 x 100cm
MARIE-ANTOINETTE
METAMORPHOSES OF AN IMAGE
16 October 2019 - 26 January 2020
Conciergerie, Paris, France
The exhibition will illustrate the many representations of Marie-Antoinette through almost 200 works, artefacts, heritage and contemporary archives, never-before-seen interviews, film extracts and fashion accessories, and shine a light on this worldwide phenomenon of media overkill through both a historic approach and a critical and comparative examination of forms.
Marie Antoinette, 2008, pigment print, 100 x 100cm
PHOTO LONDON 2018
THE FEMALE LENS
HUXLEY-PARLOUR
17 May - 20 May, 2018
Huxley-Parlour are delighted to be celebrating the works of female photographers who explore femininity as a means to extend the narrative of photography within the context of contemporary society featuring; Valerie Belin | Amanda Charchian | Cig Harvey | Petrina Hicks | Jocelyn Lee
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 2015, pigment print, 100 x 77cm
FRAGILE ARMOUR
23 March - 21 April, 2018
Perth Centre for Photography, Australia
Fragile Armour brings together the work of five artists who utilise photographic portraiture in their practices to explore the complexities of the human condition. Abdul Abdullah | Tony Albert | David Charles Collins | Petrina Hicks | Angela Tiatia individually present their subjects as a symbol of strength, resilience and defiance. Equally, this strength is juxtaposed with a reading of vulnerability and exposure. This dual depiction of strength and fragility play off each other evoking empathy and awe for subjects in the work.
Serpentina II, 2015, pigment print, 100 x 100cm
WILD
Flora and Fauna in Australian Art
23 March - 21 April, 2018
Hawkesbury Gallery, Australia
A group exhibition of artists exploring flora and fauna as an inspiration. Artists include Arthur Boyd | Pippin Drysdale | Hayden Fowler | Fiona Hall | Shaun Gladwell | Petrina Hicks | Kaltjiti Collaborative | Jenni Kemarre Martiniello | Lily Lion Kngwarreye | Emily Kame Kngwarreye | Joseph McGlennon | Danie Mellor | Noel McKenna | Albert Namatjira | John Olson | Christopher Pease | Gloria Petyarre | Margaret Preston | Angela Valamanesh | Louise Weaver
Whiskers, 2010, pigment print, 85 x 86cm
Minerva, 2015, pigment print, 77 x 100cm
ECSTASY, BAROQUE AND BEYOND
September 2017 - February 2018
UQ Art Museum, Australia
Taking as its starting point the mystical experiences of Saint Teresa of Avila, the exhibition 'Ecstasy: Baroque and Beyond' brings together historical depictions of ecstasy with more recent works focused on the transcendence of normal consciousness, including trances, moments of expanded awareness, and visionary insight.
Pietro Aquila | Chris Bennie | Anastasia Booth| Louise Bourgeois | Salvador Dali | Audrey Flack | Bill Henson | Petrina Hicks | William Hogarth | Gordon Matta-Clark | Claude Mellan | Nigel Milsom | Girolamo Nerli | Gordon Shepherdson | David Stephenson | Hiromi Tango | David Wadelton
Persephone, 2015, pigment print, 77 x 100cm
BIRDS: FLIGHT PATHS
IN AUSTRALIAN ART
2 Dec 2016 - 12 Feb 2017
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
The exhibition explores the science, symbolism, beauty and curiosity of birds. It spans time periods and mediums – iconic works by colonial artists John Lewin and Richard Browne and early 20th century artists Sydney Long and Hans Heysen are juxtaposed alongside contemporary artists including Brook Andrew | Fiona Hall | Ben Quilty | Louise Weaver | Petrina Hicks | Christian Thompson | Juan Ford | Valerie Sparks
