Anne-Marie May works across sculpture, installation, design and textiles to explore perceptual and chromatic relationships. Her celebrated practice seeks to create both spatial and conceptual connections between an artwork and its architectural location.

Making and materiality are central to May’s practice, drawing on a historical confluence of craft, design and architecture to inform the production of objects. Grounded in a research-based process of intuitive experimentation, May resists industrial modes of fabrication in lieu of a craft-orientated approach to think through the variation and irregularity inherent to a studio practice. Through the provisional forming of objects, May fosters material interactions to invite unexpected outcomes.

While producing primarily three-dimensional and spatially experienced objects, May returns to drawing as a foundational methodology to rethink conceptual relationships between interior and exterior. This fundamental line of inquiry provides May the capacity to realign spatial and surface relations, in order to develop experiential complexity.

Since her inaugural exhibition at 200 Gertrude Street in 1988, Anne-Marie May (b. 1965, Naarm/Melbourne) has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and internationally for nearly four decades. She has been included in major biennials and surveys of contemporary Australian art, including Melbourne Now, 2014, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; 21st Century Modern: 2006 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, 2006, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide and Primavera, 1995, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney. Notable solo exhibitions include Anne-Marie May: Heide II, 2004 at Heide Museum of Modern Art; Inside Out: Space and Process, 2020 at McClelland and Everyday Joyful is Mobile, 2021 at Shepparton Art Museum.

Examples of May’s work can be found in important public collections both nationally and internationally, including National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; University of Melbourne, Melbourne; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, among others.