CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Michael Simms

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Michael Simms is an award winning painter based in Sydney. Having completed degrees in both psychology and film at Flinders University before winning a scholarship to study art at the Julian Ashton Art School, Michael's practice brings together his interest in classical art and contemporary human behaviour to reveal hidden truths about his subjects. His depictions of the human figure pay homage to academic conventions within fine art (the reclining nude/the society portrait) while also reinterpreting them in the context of modern life.

His more recent series of intimately scaled landscape paintings were created during the artist's travels to the Broken Hill region. As a site that holds personal significance for him, the resulting artworks reflect both a sense of hereditary exploration and a subjective appreciation of the areas unique topography. Within his superbly crafted distillations of the regions haunting and cinematic vastness, Simms skilfully captures the essence of a fleeting moment. Sensitively observing the dramatic quality of light so unique to the Australian outback, these images are also infused with a psychological charge, blurring of the boundaries between reality and the dreamlike.

Portraiture plays a foundational role in Simms’ practice, portraying artists who create live experiences, in an ongoing project called ‘Stages’. Increasingly, he’s personally venturing further into the realm of performance, blending and bending genres to create a new kind of body-based poetics. Simms’ new series, ‘Body Talk’, orbits the dynamics of embodied intelligence via deep considerations of performance, movement, and the body in space – and history. It builds on recent explorations of performance practices during residencies at Bundanon and Gang Gang and workshops at Critical Path where the artist engaged with choreographers and movement practitioners. “This changed the way I paint’”, he reflects, “generating images from a more physical and internal place”. Created through an experimental approach of automatism, the works investigate the kinaesthetic potential of the body and how this can shift, shatter and shape the image-making process. An increased awareness of how we move through space has enabled Simms to discover unexpected anatomical shapes and unconventional gestures that challenge historical narratives and traditional tropes of masculinity. “I'm curious about how the male body is so often depicted as being strong, heroic, dominant, fighting, in conflict...and what this unconsciously re-enforces about gender roles, the patriarchy and masculinity,” he explains.'
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Elli Walsh, 2025

ARTIST PROFILE:
Michael Simms is a Sydney-based figurative painter with a Diploma of Fine Arts from the Julian Ashton Art School. In 2019, he was awarded a residency at the New York Academy of Art in Tribeca, Manhattan. In 2018, he won both the Art Society of NSW Young Artist Prize and the SBS Portrait Prize. He has been a finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2024, 2017), the John Leslie Art Prize (2024), the Calleen Art Award (2024, 2021), the Hornsby Art Prize (2024), the Archibald Prize (2023), the Mosman Art Prize (2022, 2017), the National Portrait Gallery Darling Prize (2022), the Clayton UTZ Art Prize (2021), the Manning Naked and Nude Art Prize (2021), the Lethbridge Small Scale Art Award (2021), the Shirley Hannan Portrait Prize (2020), the Percival Portrait Prize (2020), the Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2020), the SBS Portrait Prize (2020), the Lester Prize (2020), the Kennedy Art Award (2019), the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (2019), the Lethbridge Art Award (2019), the Percival Tucker Portrait Prize (2018), and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize (2017). His work has also been featured in Amber Creswell Bell's latest book 'About Face: Contemporary portrait painting in Australia and New Zealand'. He has undertaken several artist residencies including at Bundanon Trust studios Artist Residency, Illaroo NSW and Gang Gang Artist Residency, NSW in 2024. His work is held in the public collection of Maitland Regional Art Gallery, and numerous private collections including the Elliott Eyes Collection, the Thomas Keneally Centre at the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts, Cliftons Venues, Sydney, YSC Consulting, Sydney.