The key

The key, mixed media on dung paper by Marijke Lambregtse
The key has become one of the most enduring symbols of Palestinian memory. It is not only an object for opening a door; it is a witness to displacement, a keeper of address, a promise that has outlived walls, borders, and generations of exile.
Many Palestinian families still hold the keys to homes from which they were forcibly removed in 1948 and continued to be removed after that. They carry these keys as proof: we were here, we belong here, and we will return.
In this work, the key speaks of the Right of Return—the internationally ‘recognized’ right of refugees to return to their homes in safety and dignity. It embodies both an unfulfilled legal promise and the unbroken emotional bond they have to land, home, and identity. The absence of the house only strengthens the holding on to the key; what is lost survives symbolically and becomes vessels of hope.
I hope this tiny work will remind people how lucky we are if we have a home and can live in safety and have dignity.
Needs framing, can easily be framed by collector or alternative by Bluethumb framing options
Comes varnished and signed on the back with a certificate of authenticity
25% of profits will go to Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

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‘A work is born from a kind of confused emotion. The work is an attempt to elucidate that emotion.’ Puvis de Chavannes

‘An abstract language that reveals references to an aesthetic figuration with a surreal flavour. This is the art of Marijke Lambregtse, an Australian based contemporary artist of Dutch origin, who focuses her artistic research on the relationship between man and the world, in its most hidden aspects. Her paintings are often characterized by the presence of human-like figures, whose facial features vanish overwhelmed by fields of colour, annihilating gestural communication and leaving the latter in complete control of emotions.

An alternation of more gestural brushstrokes and more detailed and sharply described elements, give the work a pleasant dynamism. Looking at Marijke Lambregtse's paintings, we feel out of place, in awe, as if we have crossed the threshold into another world and we are suddenly strangers. (Francesca Brunello)

Her recent abstract figurative works arise from a growing eco-anxiety and a critical concern for the state of the world today. Shaped by direct encounters with climate change, pollution, displacement, and environmental injustice, the work responds to systems that prioritise profit, control, and exploitation over care and coexistence. She seeks to harmoniously merge message and aesthetics, using emotionally charged strikingly colorful, acrylic paint, recycled materials, text, and texture to confront viewers with both beauty and unease.

A professional dancer, teacher and choreographer before crossing over to studying visual art and gaining a BVA majoring in sculpture at Griffith University in Brisbane she was awarded the Karl and Gertrude Langer Award which resulted in a solo exhibition at the Brisbane Town Hall gallery.

Since then she has been exhibiting regularly with several solo exhibitions, being a finalist in numerous art awards and has been widely collected in Australia and overseas.

Brunswick Street Gallery Small Works Art Prize 2026
Lethbridge 2025 Small Scale Art Prize salon finalist
Finalist Abstraction Exhibition Petrie Terrace Gallery 2025/2024
Finalist in Lethbridge 2024/2023 Small Scale Art Awards Salon de Refusés
Finalist in the Brisbane Rotary Art Show 2024/2023
Finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize Salon des Refugees 2022
Finalist in the RQAS annual Exhibition 2023
Finalist in the Amore exhibition at Artprenr Gallery 2023
Finalist in the Queensland Figurative 2022
Finalist in the Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award in 2022, 21, 20 and 2019
Awarded the Power of Creativity Art Prize by Contemporary Curator Art Magazine in 2021
Highly Commended in the Abstraction Exhibition Royal Queensland Art Society 2021
Finalist in the Rotary Spectacular Brisbane in 2019 and 2018