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Since leaving the National Art School in 2020 with degrees in sculpture, Alexandra Mills has gradually returned to a largely two-dimensional practice that is strongly informed by a sculptural sensibility.
Her practice typically involves interpreting images drawn from life or research sources such as photographs or museum archives, using media including oil paint, pastel, textiles, and foraged or salvaged materials such as wire and timber. This approach sometimes results in works that blur or cross distinctions between two- and three-dimensional forms.
Mills’ practice is largely research-based, referencing archives, museum collections and historic sites. One project drew on photographic records of Darlinghurst Gaol prisoners; another engaged with a museum collection of Roman portrait heads; and a collaborative project was developed from a nineteenth-century wedding photograph of a colonial family in Randwick.
Two recent bodies of work — one focused on banksia plants and the other on aerial landscapes — emerged from close attention to small sections or slices of subject matter, drawing attention to aspects that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Alexandra Mills has been a finalist in several art prizes including the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, Northern Beaches Art Prize, North Sydney Art Prize and Hawkesbury Art Prize. She has participated in both group and solo exhibitions and has been awarded residencies sponsored by North Sydney Council, Northern Beaches Council and Les Sculptures Refusées at Q Station, Manly. Her work is held in the collection of the National Art School and in private collections.
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“This work depicts a childhood memory of southerly busters moving through the sky in central western NSW. Aerial and distant views of land intrigue me because they flatten and distort the landscape into shapes that could be many different things. They are also well suited to the process of layering a medium, such as pastel and gouache, like a wash onto the paper then manipulating it into the lines and forms suggested by the dynamic view of the land.”
Alexandra Mills, 2025.
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