Mia Boe’s portrait of Tony Armstrong has been awarded as a finalist of the Archibald Prize 2024 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
Keen to paint Armstrong because he is ‘so likeable and joyful’, Mia Boe remarked on how her sitter was ‘hard-working and committed to sharing stories. He is an amazing example not only for First Nations people, but for all people.’
Armstrong, a former AFL player and current television presenter and producer, visited Boe’s Melbourne studio for the sitting. Boe explain how the two ‘talked about life, pressure in the public eye, and connection with mob. We also discussed portraits we liked. I showed him William Dargie’s portrait of Albert Namatjira [which won the 1956 Archibald Prize], as I wanted to convey that same sense of complicated emotions in the eyes that Dargie was able to portray’.
A first-time Archibald finalist, Boe decided on Armstrong as a fitting subject for her first entry into the acclaimed prize, explaining how ‘[she] wanted to show that, despite Tony’s new fame, he has an inner world of doubts and turmoil that he doesn’t share with the country. I [Boe] wanted to juxtapose reality and myth, joy and tribulation, and create a sense of your surroundings not feeling real.’
The Archibald Prize 2024 will be on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, from 8 June – 8 September 2024. The winner of the prize will be announced on 7 June 2024.
Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2024 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Gadigal Country Naala Nura, Lower level 2 8 June – 8 September 2024; touring thereafter.
Mia Boe is presenting a immersive installation entitled Was Satellite Progressive at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (IMA). Responding to the poetry of Murri activist, artist and writer Lionel Fogarty, the painting consists of six panels and is embedded within the space by a wall drawing that traces the circumference of the gallery hall. The installation has been commissioned for the inaugural Platform group show at the IMA, a new exhibition series that showcases commissioned work by emerging artists under forty, who were born, live, or lived in Queensland.
Platform Institute of Modern Art Brisbane 20 April – 16 June 2024
Mia Boe in ‘From the other side’ at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)
Mia Boe in included in the group exhibition ‘From the other side’ currently on show at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA).
Embedding the self within a distorted scenography of quintessential Australian cinema, the artist re-populates film stills from ‘Walkabout’ and ‘Wake in Fright’ (both 1971) through the figuration of a spectral presence painted atop the lightbox surface.
Boe has produced two new works, ‘A Desolate Primitive Place’ and ‘I Suspect’ (both 2023) that mark the artist’s first employment of the lightbox as an agent of display and support. The silhouetted figures laid upon this illuminated surface disquiet the sinister and tension-filled spaces in each frame, reasserting presence in instances of narrative cinema which proliferate a jarring and ambiguous relationship to space and place.
Curated by Jessica Clark and Elyse Goldfinch, the exhibition brings together nineteen Australian and international artists, integrating historical and contemporary works alongside key new commissions that draw upon horror’s capacity to transgress and destabilise forms of power and subjugation. The exhibition casts a lens upon feminist, queer and non-binary subjectivities to consider the transgressive pleasures and liberations of horror, as makers, masters and consumers of the genre.
From the other side Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) 9 December 2023 – 3 March 2024
Mia Boe in ’15 Artists 2023′ at Redcliffe Art Gallery
Mia Boe’s painting Interrogation Room (2023) is included 15 Artists 2023 at Redcliffe Art Gallery, an exhibition organised by the Moreton Bay Region Council highlighting 15 Australian contemporary artists. One artist from the selected shortlist will be awarded a $20,000 prize and their exhibited work will be acquired into the Council’s Art Collection.
15 Artists 2023 Redcliffe Art Gallery, Redcliffe 25 November 2023 – 10 February 2024
“I miss a lot of people and places. I get very sentimental and nostalgic. These works represent that feeling, that ever-present feeling you have when you are away from home or from those you love.” —Mia Boe
During a month-long residency at Ace Hotel Sydney, Mia Boe created a series of ink paintings on silk and a natural fibre hanging sculpture exploring that ever-present feeling of acknowledging lost loved ones and ancestors around you. Depicting spirit people in landscapes and domestic space, Boe’s work is influenced by her Butchulla and Burmese ancestry, folklore and the inheritance and “disinheritance” of these two cultures.
Mia Boe I can’t stop thinking about you Ace Hotel, Sydney 25 November 2023 – 13 January 2024
Gian Manik and Mia Boe included in Gertrude Studios 2023, Gertrude Contemporary
The annual Gertrude Studios exhibition presents new and recent works produced in the organisation’s 16 studios, celebrating the site as a conduit for dialogue and making. A collective snapshot of the practices supported within the program, the exhibition offers the opportunity to experience a broad diversity of works from leading arts practitioners in Naarm/Melbourne, as well as examine material and conceptual developments in contemporary practice.
The exhibition features work from each of Gertrude’s sixteen Studio Artists, including Mia Boe and Gian Manik, remaining a cornerstone of the annual Gertrude programme that is conceived throughout the year by the Gertrude Studio Artists and the Curator in Residence Amelia Winata. The Studio Artists experiment with divergent ideas or reflect on recent productions in new configurations, all in conversation with the work of fellow practitioners.
Gertrude Studios 2023 Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne 11 November – 17 December 2023
A friendship born out of shared studio space at legendary art incubator Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, painter Mia Boe and dancer and choreographer Amrita Hepi became friends and peers. This is a conversation about their immersive art practices, battle with identity – as women, and as artists – and the dilemma of authenticity.
Melbourne Now will be displayed throughout all levels of The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia showcasing new works and commissions by emerging, mid-career, senior practitioners, and collectives.
*Jon Campbell is represented by Darren Knight Gallery
Portraiture. Not as you know it. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Mia Boe and Kate Beynon both feature in ‘Portrait23: Identity’ at the National Portrait Gallery until 18 June 2023. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ‘Portrait23: Identity’ is a major exhibition of new work from multi-award-winning contemporary Australian artists and collectives working across every state and territory. Twenty-three artists and collectives present work about who they are and what it means to represent themselves, their communities, histories and contemporary society. They break open the genre with deeply personal evocations of themes that resonate collectively, such as cultural knowledge, feminism, visibility/invisibility, activism and journeys of migration.
Mia Boe is featured in ‘the Dingo Project: Wongar’ at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery, Queensland until 21 May 2023.
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Originally curated for Ngununggula in the NSW Southern Highlands, ‘The Dingo Project: Wongari’ shifts the focus of Djon Mundine’s curatorial project to Butchulla country and the Wongari of K’gari. Featuring artists from across the country alongside Butchulla perspectives, The Dingo Project: Wongari investigates the spiritual mythology and historical narratives that connect dingoes to Aboriginal Australia.
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Artists include Joel Barney, Mia Boe, Dan Boyd, Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation and Butchulla Native Title Aboriginal Corporation, Michael Cook, Judith Crispin, Karla Dickens, Blak Douglas, Maddison Gibbs, Warwick Keen, Teena McCarthy, Lin Onus and Jason Wing.
Curated by Djon Mundine.
Catherine Bell and Mia Bow both feature in ‘Fragile Beauty’ alongside Caitlin Dear, Hannah Gartside and Pilar Mata Dupont at Bundoora Homestead until 4 March 2023.
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‘Fragile Beauty’ celebrates the strange and vulnerable existence of being in a human body – an experience that is distinctly individual, yet also part of a shared corporeal reality. The exhibition pays homage to fragile bodies past and present, giving voice to experiences and explorations of embodiment and disembodiment. The exhibition offers artists and visitors a space to reclaim bodily agency by embracing softer states of the human experience that don’t always feel safe to express.
Once a year, Gertrude opens their private studios to the public, providing audiences with a special opportunity to meet the artists, view works in progress, and experience the environment in which Gertrude Studio Artists create their work. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Join Sutton artists Mia Boe, Catherine Bell & Gian Manik this Saturday 18 February for a peek into their studio practice alongside the 2022-2024 cohort.
Sutton Gallery is pleased to announce the representation of Melbourne based painter, Mia Boe.
Born in Brisbane in 1997, Boe received a Bachelor of Art, Majoring in Art History from the University if Queensland in 2020. In 2021, she was a recipient of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship and is a current Gertrude Contemporary Studio artist. Forthcoming exhibitions include ‘Melbourne Now’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and ‘Portrait23: Identity’ at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
Boe’s first exhibition at Sutton Gallery will take place later in 2023, alongside artwork from the Gordon Bennett Estate, curated by Tim Riley-Walsh
