An everlasting finale

My drawing compositions begin as a collage: fashioned from photographs of everyday objects and structures I encounter - a shining colander, glasses frames, the glistening new buildsings and derelict old houses around my neighbourhood. The photographs are often taken at odd angles to exaggerate their forms, and are transformed by imaginative process into strange conglomerate objects and spaces that take ordinariness and the prosaic and make them almost malevolent in their strangeness and synthetic colouring. The result is a new and unsettling architecture, a rich scene that offers something new every time you look at it.

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Natalie Mather is a Melbourne-based painter. Considering her paintings as small ‘worlds’ or ‘imaginary geographies’ of her own invention, Mather draws from various sources: narrative works, science fiction, geological imagery and historical architecture to build her fantastical visions. Mather has an unabashed love of colour, and she takes huge influence from the visual language of 1980s pop culture and design – born out of nostalgia for the bright and garish aesthetics she grew up with and around.

Graduating from the ANU school of Art in 2009, Mather worked in Canberra, Newcastle and Berlin before settling in Melbourne in 2014. Natalie has been a finalist in prizes such as the Churchie, Fishers Ghost Art Award and Macquarie Emerging Art Award. She collaborated with New Agency on a mural commission for MARS Gallery and Stonnington Council in 2020, and her work was featured in ArtEdit magazine’s ‘Ones to Watch’ segment. Natalie completed a Masters of Fine Art (Research) at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2021, and was a recipient of the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship and Carolyn and Hans Varney Prize. She was a finalist in the Bayside Acquisitive Art Award in 2022 and again in 2024. Her work is held in private collections in Australia, New Zealand and Europe.