MICHAEL KELLY | THE WORLD OF INTERIORS

JOIN THE ARTIST AT THE OPENING: SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER, 4 - 6PM "The interiors in this exhibition are based on drawings I’ve done over the years while visiting art museums and other cultural institutions in Europe. It has long been a habit of mine, since my first trip overseas in 1989, to draw from paintings and sculptures in these institutions. More recently I’ve drawn the spaces they occupy as well. While the idea for these works may originate from a certain place I visited, they invariably change to include or exclude other elements depending on the dictates of the work itself. They are not literal translations of a certain place and often take on encounters I’ve had and personal history. By the time I stop work on a painting, they are usually far removed from the original idea. They are more about space and atmosphere, light and dark, reality and artifice and the inner and outer worlds. Doorways, windows and corridors are portals we travel through between these worlds. The paintings reflect on art, myth and history. There are paintings within paintings, sometimes literally, and sometimes as a landscape through a window or sometimes as fragments." – Michael Kelly 2025