Sydney Exhibition
Neeva Malla
19 February – 1 March 2026
Opens Wednesday 18 February, 6 – 8pm
We’ve been working hard to get this program up and running & it’s finally time to show the fruit of our labour. To open the exhibitions for 2026 is recent National Art School graduate @neeva_malla with work made under the Rachael Helmore Emerging Artist Mentoring Program.
In memory of Rachael Helmore we have established a sponsored and more formal version of our Mentoring Program. Rachael tragically died in 2023 and we’ve had many people contact us including Christie’s London where Rachael work on a paid internship through Sydney University. Staff at Christie’s London declared Rachael as their best intern ever, and have generously offered to sponsor the program along with the Helmore family. We’re so very grateful to be able to facilitate this program.
As part of the mentorship Neeva has been working under the guide of Scratch Director Carmel Byrne and has the use of a free studio at Scratch Art Space for two months to finish off her work.
Follow the link for more information on the Rachael Helmore Emerging Artist Mentoring Program.
Artist Statement
Material & Process
My practice is concerned with the concept of visuals and images, most often gathered from random objects found in my studio, which encourage me to be more experimental with my mediums. I work with acrylic and oil paint, materials that are traditional to the canon of painting, along with a mix of drawing elements such as coloured pencils and paint pens that allow me to layer softly and have different images on top of each other.
The mix of mediums allow me to expand the range in which I think about and interpret the subject. It’s also a practical way to keep me interested and engaged with the artwork as I paint layers, over and over until finished. The potential for discussions of different effects achieved on the surface builds into my process to articulate the methods and to engage with the audience.
About ideas
This series is concerned with the ideas of canons, traditions and customs in art. Art history teaches us that there are distinct separate movements and schools of ideas that either develop dependently or independently of history. However, living in the contemporary age with such a wide variety of approaches and methods I believe that such a view of art seems detrimental. It ultimately narrows the possibility of art itself.
I take a satirical view on the divide between artist and audience that has bred ideas of elitism and populism. Skill, beauty, and time are well-known in the audience’s art consciousness as the only attributes of good art, prone to banal common sense. I am not willing to give up craftsmanship and opt for detached, inward-looking theoretical concepts that are exclusive of our lived world. I hope that my conscious emphasis on technique and methods, and choosing subject matters that allude to tropes and cliches of artistic understanding, will take me to a middle-point that bridges the link between the artist and the audience through satire.
Neeva Malla 2026
