FLG returns to Sydney Contemporary for another inspiring exhibition, showcasing new works from acclaimed Brisbane based figurative painter Bronwyn Hill and award-winning Sydney based paper artist Stuart McLachlan. Hill’s meticulous technique lends an uncanny realism to her figurative works, each painting acting as a visual diary. Through intricate craftsmanship and immersive engagement, McLachlan’s pieces urge a shift toward empathy, awareness, and responsibility.
Bronwyn Hill is a Brisbane-based artist whose deeply introspective practice explores themes of emotional fragility, societal anxiety, and the psychological complexities of selfhood. Working primarily in oil on canvas, Hill’s meticulous technique lends an uncanny realism to her figurative works, each painting acting as a visual diary—chronicling memory, processing personal narratives, and reflecting on human vulnerability.
Hill has developed a practice that merges the precision of classical realism with a highly personal, symbolic language. Her self-portraits capture moments of introspection, often infused with an unsettling tension. Through careful staging and the incorporation of natural motifs, Hill creates compositions that extend beyond mere likeness, offering glimpses into the deeper recesses of the mind. Her paintings resonate with shared human experiences—doubt, melancholy, longing—yet remain strikingly intimate.
This new body of work delves into the psychological weight of anxiety, employing insects and invasive plant species as metaphors for intrusive thoughts and emotional unrest. Bees and ants, with their relentless industriousness and hive-minded urgency, represent the persistent undercurrent of anxiety—a constant, humming presence beneath the surface. Meanwhile, the morning glory flower, known for its aggressive, strangling nature, becomes a potent symbol of entanglement and suffocation, reflecting the way anxiety can constrict and overwhelm.
These organic elements creep across the surfaces of her paintings—crawling over figures, emerging from within folds of fabric, or entangling limbs—blurring the boundaries between self and environment. This interplay between the body and the natural world highlights the inescapable entwinement of our internal states with the external pressures of modern existence. In doing so, Hill continues her ongoing examination of the tension between human fragility and resilience.
Hill’s paintings are characterised by an extraordinary stillness, where time seems suspended. Her figures, though realistic, exist in a state of quiet contemplation, their interactions with insects and flora intensifying the psychological atmosphere. The clarity of her rendering, with its delicate interplay of light and shadow, enhances the ethereal quality of her compositions, reinforcing the idea that these scenes exist both in reality and within the mind.
This work continues to push the boundaries of figurative painting by embedding emotional and symbolic depth within its hyperreal surfaces. Hill’s ability to translate complex psychological states into exquisitely painted, tactile forms ensures that her art remains both compelling and profoundly relatable. She offers viewers a deeply personal yet universally resonant meditation on anxiety, resilience, and the intricate interplay between the self and the world around us.
Stuart McLachlan is an internationally acclaimed artist whose intricate sculptures crafted from paper, stone, and mixed media offer incisive critiques of humanity’s environmental impact. His practice interrogates themes of displacement, survival, and the fragile balance between progress and destruction. Through delicate yet conceptually bold constructions, McLachlan challenges the viewer to confront the consequences of climate change, unsustainable development, and the ever-growing environmental toll of human industry.
For Sydney Contemporary 2025, McLachlan expands his examination of environmental degradation and global displacement with a new series of works that merge poetic storytelling with urgent socio-political commentary. Among them is The Last Resort, a striking critique of climate change and rising sea levels, portraying Pacific island communities on the brink of submersion. Meanwhile, Hatchet Job symbolically illustrates the tension between urban expansion and environmental destruction, depicting a house embedded within an axe blade—a stark metaphor for humanity’s relentless drive for development at nature’s expense.
A dramatic new addition to this body of work is McLachlan’s oil tanker sculpture, suspended in the air like a prize-winning marlin, dripping black oil from its surface. Inspired by the tradition of weighing large fish at docks, the piece transforms the language of sport and conquest into a chilling allegory for environmental recklessness. Below, a pool of black Perspex ‘oil’ spreads across the floor, offering viewers the opportunity to stand beside the tanker as if posing with a trophy catch—an unsettling reminder of human complicity in ecological collapse.
McLachlan’s sculptures serve as both cautionary tales and calls to action. His work highlights the paradox of human resilience and recklessness, questioning why societies continue to prioritize short-term profit over long-term survival. Through intricate craftsmanship and immersive engagement, his pieces force viewers to reconsider their relationship with the world, urging a shift toward empathy, awareness, and responsibility.
