A chance to meet with artist Luke Thurgate at .M Contemporary Gallery 8/15-19 Boundary St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010. Luke is an artist living and working on Gadigal Land (Sydney). He teaches drawing and painting at the National Art School, where he graduated in 2021 with a Master of Fine Art. Luke has an extensive exhibition history including recent exhibitions at Backwoods Gallery, Burra Regional Art Gallery, National Art School and Adelaide Central Gallery. He was a finalist in the 2019 Dobell Drawing Prize, the 2020 Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Prize and the 2020 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award.

Luke’s multi-disciplinary studio practice explores the construction and deconstruction of ‘identity’ in relation to masculinity, sexuality, romance and power. His current work uses the monster as a surrogate ’other’ to explore tensions between parody, sincerity, menace, pathos, transgression, and vulnerability. Luke’s work borrows from a range of sources, including popular culture, pornography, and queer history.