Michelle Ussher’s practice is motivated by an ongoing interest in how an image, form or sound can communicate the subjective and conditional nature of perception. With an emphasis on the handmade, represented through luscious oil paintings, watercolours and oils on paper, and glazed ceramics, her highly evocative works oscillate between figurative and abstracted imagery. Their fraught surfaces and half-materialised forms produce a sense of history entangled with the effects of imagination and the unconscious. Ussher’s works often scrutinise the world of intimacy, to decolonise and reimagine historic and symbolic Western representations of female identity and sexuality.

Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2002, Ussher’s work has exhibited in Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. In 2021 she completed a Masters of Aesthetics and Art Theory, supervised by Catherine Malabou at the Centre of Research in European Philosophy, Kingston University. She has undertaken artist residencies at the Cité International des Arts (2008), the Australia Council for the Arts London Studio (2009), the British School at Rome (2015) the Acme Fire Station, London (2015-2020) and West Dean College (2020-21). She received an Arts Council England international development grant (2016) to undertake the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) Phasmid residency in Berlin, and an Australia Council for the Arts mid-career development grant to undertake research in Greece (2014), which led to her significant solo exhibition Yellow eyes burn and Return at TarraWarra Museum of Art (2014).

Unsettled Subjects

Unsettled Subjects

Kate Bohunnis, Pat Brassington, Judy Chicago, Séraphine Pick, Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, Michelle Ussher

9 November – 30 November 2024

sydney

Michelle Ussher

Things Fall Apart

7 October – 4 November 2023

melbourne

Michelle Ussher

Afterburner

18 June – 30 July 2022

sydney

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Yellow Wallpaper

Kate Bohunnis, Sarah Contos, Narelle Desmond, Eugenia Lim, Nell, Jahnne Pasco-White, Heather B. Swann, Julia Trybala, Marian Tubbs, Michelle Ussher

21 August – 4 September 2021

melbourne

Web8

Ten year show

12 June – 10 July 2021

melbourne

Photo 7-1-21, 10 47 48 am

Quarantine Art Fair

Jon Cattapan, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Adam Lee, Dane Lovett, Nell, Jonny Niesche, Tom Polo, Reko Rennie, Gareth Sansom, Michelle Ussher, Isadora Vaughan, Yevgeniya Baras

7 January – 10 January 2021

art fair

gallery view

Pleasure Plants

Adam Lee, Sam Martin, Clare Milledge, Sean Peoples, André Piguet, Michael Staniak, Marian Tubbs, Michelle Ussher, Isadora Vaughan

11 September – 26 October 2019

sydney

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Grotesquerie

Steve Carr, Consuelo Cavaniglia, David Griggs, Dane Lovett, TV Moore, Séraphine Pick, Michelle Ussher

4 May – 25 May 2019

melbourne

Spring_3

Spring 1883, Melbourne

Stella Corkery, Dane Lovett, Patrick Lundberg, Patrick Pound, Lisa Radford, Michelle Ussher

1 August – 4 August 2018

art fair

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Jon Cattapan, Adam Lee, Sam Martin, Nell, Tomislav Nikolic, Michelle Ussher, and Jake Walker

16 June – 21 July 2018

melbourne

Michelle Ussher

Medusa's Room

25 March – 13 April 2017

melbourne

Michelle Ussher

Is it your body I hold in my arms or the sea? — Featuring a sound collaboration with composer Huw Hallam and soprano Frederica Cunningham. Crochet by Judith Ussher

25 April – 23 May 2015

melbourne

Ronnie van Hout 'Extra Leg'

In the Dust of This Planet

Steve Carr, James Deutsher, Anna Kristensen, Adam Lee, Tim McMonagle, TV Moore, Michelle Ussher & Ronnie van Hout

1 November – 22 November 2014

melbourne

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Michelle Ussher

Two Eyeballs on the Run – Looking for a New Head to House. Part One

11 September – 27 October 2012

melbourne

First show

Daniel Boyd, Jon Campbell, Steve Carr, Jon Cattapan, Simon Denny, James Deutsher, Diena Georgetti, Matt Hinkley, Robert Hunter, Moya McKenna, Tim McMonagle, Tony Schwensen, Renee So, Glenn Sorensen, Michelle Ussher, Ronnie van Hout

23 July – 20 August 2011

melbourne