CAIRNS 2024.432

Mitch Cairns’s Adelaide Painting 2024 is an unconventional self-portrait. It captures the artist accidentally stepping on his new pair of glasses during the opening of the 2022 Adelaide Biennial, where he presented a suite of new works. Instead of celebrating the occasion or reflecting on his new paintings, Cairns documents the pain of the cut and the loss of his glasses. 

This work reflects the artist’s distinctive style, both in its unique subject matter and method of creation. Cairns laboriously builds his images using very thin layers of oil paint, which allow the canvas’s texture and areas of underpainting to remain visible.