NELL

Early Years

Nell was born in 1975 in Maitland in rural New South Wales—she grew up in the same house until she left for art school during the 1990s. “I craved cultural stimulation and there wasn’t much to be found,” she has said. During her childhood, Nell drew, painted, wrote poetry and played guitar. Listening to music on the radio inspired her to make a creative life for herself. She trained in painting at Sydney College of the Arts (with Lindy Lee) and gained her BA in 1995. She then studied performance and installation at UCLA, getting a BA in 1996. Periods of study then followed at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and back at Sydney College of the Arts, where she received her Master’s in 2006.

Nell: Artworks

“I’m really passionate about communicating,” Nell said in 2025, “and I do it through visual art. That’s my thing.” She uses mediums including media painting, sculpture, bronze, textiles, earthenware, tapestry, mosaic, steel and glass (although nothing screen-based). Her practice considers binaries, such as when does day become night or how noise and silence co-exist. Her works are dramatic yet also domestic, using everything from ironing boards to sequins.

• Unlimited Radiance (2001) is a huge wall installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney. It features nearly 20,000 sequins making a red, orange, silver and gold sunset reflected across water. An industrial fan creates a breeze allowing the sequins to sparkle and shimmer. Creating Unlimited Radiance was a painstaking process, highlighting the intensive labour required to create a large object from a series of smaller ones. The relationship between the individual and the whole is examined in the Buddhist concept of “Indra’s net”, which describes the interconnectedness of the universe.
• In 2019, Nell created Eveleigh Treehouse, two treehouses on elongated legs that are joined together by low walkways. More than 400 people from the community in Eveleigh, New South Wales, made individual metal leaves for the project. Nell’s great-grandfather had worked at Eveleigh Railways. The project was hand-made using Victorian-era method at the local blacksmith’s workshop.
• For her 2025 survey Face Everything, Nell exhibited 80 works, 50 of them new, featuring her trademark faces, as well as pieces created especially to complement the light space at Heide Modern in Melbourne. Ironing boards, glass, smileys and eggs were placed around the former house, including everyday happiness (brown) (2025), a tiny bronze poo that smiles out from its spot on a shelf below a bathroom mirror.

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Nell: Face Everything, Heide Modern, Melbourne (2025)
• Old New Wave, Linden, Melbourne (2023)
• The WAY Home, STATION, Sydney (2022)
• I SAW the LIGHT, STATION, Melbourne (2021)
• Blessings, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2018)
• NE/LL, Shepparton Art Museum, Shepparton (2016)
• Gravest Hits, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2013)
• It’s a Long Way to the Top (If you Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll), Mona Foma Festival of Music and Art, Sydney (2011)
• All the Way, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2008)
• Fly as High as Me, Newcastle Region Art Gallery (2002)
• Nell, Galerie Y-Burg, Vrieshuis Amerika, Amsterdam (1998)
• Bunny Installation, Interior 4, Sydney (1994)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Greetings from Wollongong, Wollongong Art Gallery (2025)
• Nell And Tiger Love AC/DC, STATION, Sydney (2024)
• Just Not Australian, Museum of Sydney (2023) (and touring)
• Sleepwalking, Maitland Regional Art Gallery (2022)
• Looking at Painting, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (2021)
• Confluence, Canberra Glassworks (2018)
• Lovers of Neptune’s Cabinet, Jam Factory, Adelaid2e (2016)
• Theatre of the World, La maison rouge, Paris (2013)
• Group Show 2009/2010, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (2009)
• 2004: Australian CultureNow, The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (2004) (and touring)
• nell + mel, Galerie, Stadt Munchen, Amsterdam (2000)
• UCLA Senior Undergraduate Art Exhibition, Wight Art Gallery, Los Angeles (1997)
• Young Dissidents, The Long Gallery, Wollongong University, Wollongong (1994)

Further Reading

• Nell’s Instagram
• Artist profile page at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
• 2025 interview from ArtsHub
• 2021 conversation in Ocula
• Interview from freundevonfreunden

NELL FAQs

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