
Dawn Chorus marks a pivotal moment in Gene A’Hern’s artistic practice, coinciding with his recent solo exhibition in Los Angeles and his receipt of the prestigious__Sir John Sulman Art Prize from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This series of new paintings continues A’Hern’s investigation into the poetics of place, memory, and cyclical time, using painting as a means of documenting lived experience. This series is underpinned by the idea of dawn as both a literal and symbolic event, a daily phenomenon that signals renewal, continuity, and the quiet possibility of transformation. Drawing inspiration from the smallest of birds whose early calls signal the beginning of day, A’Hern positions the ‘Dawn Chorus’ as a metaphor for the rhythm of the seasons and the shifting interplay of colour and light that animates our visual world.
Executed with a dynamic material vocabulary, ranging from oil stick and pastel to gestural layers of paint on linen, paper or board, A’Hern’s work reveal a commitment to texture, surface, and expressive mark-making. His paintings oscillate between abstraction and narrative, collapsing distinctions between personal history, familial memory, and broader painterly traditions. A’Hern constructs images that are simultaneously energetic and intimate. Dawn Chorus not only reflects the artist’s continued exploration of painting as a time-based medium but also evokes a deeper reflection on renewal and how the act of making can mirror the natural cycles that shape both the world around us and the inner landscapes we carry.
Gene A’hern (b. 1993, Katoomba Australia) holds a B.F.A. from the National Art School, Sydney (2016). He has held solo exhibitions in Australia, the United States, and Europe, including, Charged Memory in Hill House at Simchowitz in Los Angeles (2025), The Storm that Grew Us at Cassandra Bird, Sydney (2024); A Curtain Through the Trees at Brigade Gallery, Copenhagen (2023); and Day Pours Speech, Night Reveals Knowledge at Simchowitz, Los Angeles (2022). His work has been featured in group exhibitions internationally in Hill House at Simchowitz, Los Angeles, and Color Coded at Bode Gallery, Berlin.
Gene A’Hern was just recently announced as the Winner of the Sir John Sulman art prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.








Gene A’Hern (b. 1993 in Australia) is an artist based in New South Wales, Australia. At the core of his practice is a deep engagement with drawing. Gestural marks are made with a combination of processes revealing an eruption of recognisable elements from his everyday landscape: mountain peaks, rain, sky, and bushland. Oscillating between abstraction and landscape, portrait and still life painting, A’Hern’s work is arbitrarily engaged in modernist painting yet looks inward to echo a unique pictorial language, as depth and movement reveal a lyrical illustration of place.


CASSANDRA BIRD is a contemporary art gallery with spaces in Sydney and Paris. Working across Australia and Europe, the gallery represents artists whose practices engage with critical, material, historical, and cultural questions, situating their work within broader institutional and transnational contexts, and building sustained connections between practices, histories, and audiences. The gallery draws on deep experience across contemporary art sectors in Asia, Europe, and North America, which shapes a considered approach to working with artists, one focused on long-term development, meaningful institutional relationships, and thoughtful placement. Across its two locations, CASSANDRA BIRD connects artists, institutions, and collections, maintaining a genuine commitment to the artists it represents and the longer arcs of their careers.

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