DAVID EGAN

Constructed through the slow accretion of translucent layers of colour, the paintings unfold as perceptual environments in which forms hover between appearance and dissolution. Figures and grounds drift in shifting relation, suggesting ambiguous narratives and uncertain temporalities. Rather than depicting extraordinary worlds, the works attend to ordinary material and perceptual processes — the biological transformation of wheat into bread, spoken words entering listening ears, cells dividing and multiplying — allowing mystery and strangeness to emerge through subtle shifts in perspective, as familiar phenomena are observed from oblique or unstable vantage points.

Egan’s practice of painting is defined by an ongoing enquiry into acts of looking and the materiality of images. There is a quiet undercurrent of religious imagery and sensibility in Egan’s work, rather than being directly referenced, its presence tends to surface indirectly, as a residue within the paintings’ attention to ritual, transformation and the threshold between the material and the immaterial. Egan approaches painting as a procedure of ‘colour handling’, a term the artist defines as a paradoxical space — as colour is a neurological phenomenon which cannot be touched or handled — from which to interrogate some of the conceptual, emotional and spiritual registers of the medium.

Egan lives and works in Melbourne; in 2026 he was the recipient of the Bayside Painting Prize; he has exhibited regularly for the past decade including the solo exhibitions at Neon Parc, Melbourne (2025 & 2022); Hayden’s Gallery, Melbourne (2021); Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2019); and Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2015). His work has been included in survey shows such as Knowing Otherwise, MUMA (2026); Thin Skin, MUMA, Melbourne (2023); Painting. More Painting, ACCA (2016); and Fabrik; conceptual, minimalist and performative approaches to textiles, Ian Potter Museum of Art and Margret Lawrence Gallery of Art (2016).