Mitch Cairns is an artist whose mostly figurative painting practice balances the quickness and playfulness of improvised pictorial concepts with an unparalleled command of oil paint. The surprising pairing of wit and discipline produces paintings that are at once thin and flat yet extraordinarily complex and subtle. For his subject matter, Cairns draws on the poetics of domestic and familial life, where love, banality, self-reflection, eroticism, melancholy and anxiety provide ample image-ideas. On this foundation of the everyday, he builds homages to artistic and literary heroes. Cairns often uses text as material in works indebted to concrete poetry. Drawing, printmaking and collage form an extensive production on paper, while recent works in bronze and mirror emphasise the object-based aspect of his practice.
In 2026, the National Art School Gallery, Sydney, and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, partnered to present Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth, a survey of twenty years of Cairns’ practice featuring loans of nearly 50 works from institutional and private collections. Curated by Lucy Latella and Robert Leonard, the exhibition was presented at NAS Gallery from 1 May to 11 July 2026 and is on view at the Institute of Modern Art from 10 October to 20 December 2026. The exhibition is accompanied by a significant monograph.
Cairns has presented solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2025), Wollongong Art Gallery (2025) and Heide Museum of Modern Art (2015). He has exhibited in major group exhibitions including Thin Skin, curated by Jennifer Higgie, Monash University Museum of Art; Free/State: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, curated by Sebastian Goldspink, Art Gallery of South Australia; The National 2021: New Australian Art, curated by Abigail Moncrieff; and Painting. More Painting, curated by Max Delany and Hannah Mathews, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. Cairns was awarded the Archibald Prize (2017) and the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2012). In 2019, he curated Primavera: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
Cairns has produced a number of artist books and serial publications, including Pebble (2021–2024, with Mitchel Cumming), Selected Scuffs (2021), The Reader’s Voice (2015) and Dip or Skinny Dip (2014). He has founded two exhibition programs as an adjunct to his studio activities: ANKLES (2018–2021) and Cellar Door (2023–ongoing).