"Of late, Cairns has dubbed his works “perfume paintings”, in the sense of “something entering the air, a sensory acknowledgement”.

—Steve Dow

Mitch Cairns (b. 1984, l. Gadigal Country/Sydney) is an artist whose distinctive painting practice balances a quickness and playfulness of improvised pictorial concepts with an unparalleled ability with his oil paint medium, rare in an artist of his generation. The surprising pairing of wit and discipline provides paint outcomes that are at once thin and flat but extraordinarily complex and subtle. For his subject matter, Cairns recounts a poetics of domestic/familial life where love, banality, self-reflection, eroticism, melancholy, anxiety provide ample image-ideas. On top of this foundation of the everyday, he builds homages to artist and literary heroes and other enthusiasms. Cairns often uses text as material for his work indebted to concrete poetry and spilling over to printmaking and collage, the domain of his extensive production on paper.

Cairns was awarded the Archibald Prize (2017) and the Brett Whiteley Traveling Art Scholarship (2012). In 2022, Cairns was the judge of the Brett Whiteley Traveling Art Scholarship and he curated Primavera: Young Australian Artists in 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

Cairns has produced a number of artist books and serial publications: Pebble (2021—2024, with Mitchel Cumming), Selected Scuffs (2021), The Reader's Voice (2015) and Dip or Skinny Dip (2014). He has founded/curated two exhibition programs as an adjunct to his studio activities: ANKLES (2018—2021) and Cellar Door (2023—2024), both Sydney.

Key exhibitions

Mitch Cairns: Restless Legs, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2025 Thin Skin, curated by Jennifer Higgie, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2023 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, curated by Sebastian Goldspink, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2022 The National: New Australian Art, curated by Abigail Moncrief, Carriageworks, Sydney, 2021 Painting. More Painting, curated by Max Delany and Hannah Mathews, at the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2016 Mitch Cairns: The Reader's Voice, curated by Linda Michael, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2015-2016

Key readings

Emma O'Neill, 'Restless Legs', Memo Review, 14.06.25 Daniel Mudie Cunningham, 'Mitch Cairns', exh. text, The National: New Australian Art, Carriageworks, Sydney, 2021 Wes Hill, 'Around Town, Sydney Australia', Frieze, 9 February, 2017 Stephanie Berlangieri and Hannah Mathews, 'Mitch Cairns', Painting. More Painting, exh. cat, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2016, pp. 54-57 Dan Rule, Mitch Cairns: Poetics and Pragmatics, Vault, Issue 11, 2015, pp. 20-23

Collections

Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of South Australia
Artbank
Deloitte
Heide Museum of Modern Art
Monash University Museum of Art
Murray Art Museum Albury
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
National Portrait Gallery
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Susan Jones and Peter Taylor Collection
Wesfarmers
Wollongong University Art Collection

» View available works by Mitch Cairns