Amanda Marburg’s paintings are the end-product of an extended process that involves photography and model making. Drawing from film, art history, cultural artefacts and paraphernalia, Marburg constructs technically modest yet endearing plasticine figures before photographing the strange worlds she creates against studio backdrops. Painting from these photographs, a curious tension arises in Marburg’s images between the intentionally unceremonious handling of her models, mediated through the medium of photography, and the exacting realism with which her subjects are rendered. Melancholic and irreverent in equal measure, Marburg’s paintings enlist and rework canonical tropes to relieve the medium from its own rigidity.

Select solo exhibitions: for you broccoli, with Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2019; Would you let me into your bed, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2018; How Some Children Played at Slaughtering, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2016; Becoming Something Other, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; The pathway to corporeal pleasures, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney, 2012; A place to hide, Kaliman Rawlins, Melbourne, 2011; Guardians of the Departed, Uplands, Melbourne, 2009; The other side, Uplands, Melbourne, 2007; The Bomb, TCB Art Inc., Melbourne, 2001.

Select group exhibitions: All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne 2017; 9 x 5 exhibition, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 2017; Dear Masato all at once, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; The Sixth, Westspace, Melbourne, 2013; Art & Australia Collection, MOP Gallery, Sydney, 2012; Like, Casula Powerhouse Gallery, Sydney, 2012; Model Pictures, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, 2011; neo-Gothic, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane, 2008; Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2007; Depth of Field, Shepparton Art Gallery, Victoria, 2003; Neo Noir, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, 2002; Fascination, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 2000.