Contrived Casualness: How Zoe Young’s Work Spans the Ordinary and Extraordinary
Transforming everyday settings and objects into idyllic scenes that hold unique emotional depth, Zoe Young’s work connects individual stories with broader human emotions. Showcasing a solo presentation with Sophie Gannon Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne) at the Fair in next year, Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Zoe about how she creates her still-life compositions, honoring her voice, and what she’s currently working on for the event.
Your paintings often elicit feelings of nostalgia, leaving the impression of a personal memory or a film still. What draws you to these everyday domestic scenes?
I think of my work as contrived casualness. On the surface, it might look effortless or ordinary, but it’s carefully staged—my studio becomes a set, and life beyond it is edited into moments that feel suspended in time. Beauty has the power to freeze things, and painting lets me rearrange those fragments. Sometimes, it feels uncanny—I’ve even lived out scenes from my paintings. The ordinary and extraordinary blur in ways I can’t fully explain. There’s an alchemy to the process.
Courtesy Zoe Young and Sophie Gannon Gallery.
Are your paintings often based on scenes in your personal life? Do you see painting as a form of journaling or recording personal histories?
In a way, yes. At first, I doubted whether anyone cared about my perspective, but I realised the personal is political. Growing up, I struggled to believe in my own voice—I even wanted to take my father’s name, Butch, because Zoe felt too soft. Painting has become a way to claim and honour that voice. I often find that the more sincere and personal the work, the more it resonates with others. Having spent a big slice of my childhood on Sydney Harbour, there are glimpses and rituals that are quintessential to my experience that I hope are an echo for others of our entwined lives.
Can you describe your process when forming a still-life composition, from ideation to final outcome?
For this show, still life goes beyond the studio walls. Instead of arranging flowers or books, I’m composing with streets, clouds, yachts, terraces—all the motifs of my misspent youth: dawdling about, loitering with friends, walking up back laneways, and sunbathing my life away like I had all the time in the world. I think about Pamela Anderson’s no-makeup photos, and I want to reveal Sydney in the same manner—give her some time, scratch the surface, rip off the facade, and she’s actually even more beautiful.
Courtesy Zoe Young and Sophie Gannon Gallery.
How has your practice evolved throughout your career?
Painting has always been how I make sense of things. In high school, my catchphrase was, “Do you get what I mean?” and every painting I make is still asking that question. I’ve always had an insatiable appetite for expressing the slightly indefinable. I really want to get to the core of something—the essence—whether it’s a person, place, or side dish in a restaurant. I’m just really interested in doing the best painting I can of whatever I’m trying to define at the time.
What can we expect at Melbourne Art Fair in 2025?
It’s a love letter to Sydney, from someone who knows her, without her makeup on. It’s a tribute to all the years of loitering about the harbour, weaving through the lounges, lingering in the kitchens, where the scent of salt unites every window. I’m trying to bring all these ideas I’ve been hoarding in my mind since childhood about the harbour to life—collaging decades and incarnations into scenes. I’m trying to distil the essence of the harbour, the subtle aroma of Moreton Bay figs, the swell on the dock, the faded shirts on the weathered bodies, the glistening of time as people pass from youth to age about the bays.
Melbourne Art Fair returns 20 – 23 February 2025 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Tickets are currently on sale here.
