The Groom Stripped Bare

Emerging from a recent residency at Bundanon, 'The Groom Stripped Bare' draws on the ghosted landscape and psychological resonance of that place — a site long intertwined with the legacy of Arthur Boyd. Simms’ work echoes and reimagines Boyd’s Bride series, shifting the lens onto the male body with equal parts vulnerability, distortion, and desire.

Here, Simms choreographs the figure in a moment of suspension — exposed, contorted, yet oddly serene. The gestural marks and spectral lines speak to the performative act of painting, and of being seen. The body is not only observed but staged, as if mid-rehearsal, mid-reckoning.

Bundanon’s charged landscape, steeped in stories of transformation and myth, fed directly into this body of work. Simms channels the tension between intimacy and alienation, between self and stage, in a palette of moody violets and bruised blues.