Celebrating his twenty-year artistic career since graduating in 2006, the National Art School Gallery and Institute of Modern Art presents a major survey exhibition of work by Sydney-based painter and Archibald Prize winner Mitch Cairns.
Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth features some 48 works, mostly from institutional and private collections, including a still life made as a graduating student and his 2017 Archibald Prize–winning portrait of partner and fellow artist Agatha Gothe-Snape. Also marking the 20th anniversary of NAS Gallery, this is the largest and most comprehensive show of his work to date.
A joint project by NAS Gallery and Meanjin/Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth is curated by NAS Gallery Curator Lucy Latella and IMA Director Robert Leonard, and traces Cairns’ evolution, reflecting his ongoing engagement with the poetics of daily life and his artistic heroes.
“Mitch Cairns is one of the great contemporary success stories to come out of the National Art School, and we are delighted to celebrate his achievements with this outstanding survey of work,” said NAS Director and CEO Dr Kristen Sharp.
“It is a pleasure to celebrate Mitch’s 20-year career, that coincides with the 20-year anniversary of the NAS Gallery, in a very special homecoming that we’re excited to present.”
Cairns’ work has been exhibited at major institutions across Australia, with his recent solo exhibitions Restless Legs (2025) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Wollongong Art Gallery. His works are held in national collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Murdoch University Art Collection and Monash University Museum of Art, as well as private collections in Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the United States.
In addition to his own art making, Cairns founded and curated exhibition programs for Ankles (2018 – 2021) and Cellar Door (2023–ongoing) and was curator of Primavera 2019: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. The first edition of his artist publication Penne and Other Shorter Written Works is included within the accompanying Artist’s Mouth exhibition catalogue, published by NAS and IMA.
“Mitch Cairns has established himself as a prolific, meticulous image maker over the past twenty years. This selection of work across various media highlights his anachronistic, cross-referential oeuvre, which is persistently unsettled by humour, local references, and a sensitivity to contemporary lived experience,” said Co-Curator Lucy Latella.
“My introduction to Cairns’ work was through his painting Geranium Pots (Interior) (2016). It shows a workman who could be constructing a painting or pulling it apart. It strikes me that Cairns does both at once,” said Co-Curator Robert Leonard.
Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth
NAS Gallery, 156 Forbes Street, Darlinghurst (Sydney)
Exhibition: 1 May – 11 July 2026
Information: www.nas.edu.au
Institute of Modern Art, 420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley (Brisbane)
Exhibition: 10 October – 20 December 2026
Information: www.ima.org.au
Images: Mitch Cairns, Redpath Shoes or Cover Charge, 2025, oil on linen, Murdoch University Art Collection, image courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney © the artist | Mitch Cairns in studio, 2025 – photo by Peter Morgan