Petalia Humphreys

Petalia Humphreys is an artist living and working on Gubbi Gubbi land on the Sunshine Coast.

Delighting us with playful candy-coloured hues, Petalia Humphreys' three-dimensional paintings invite the ambulatory viewer to participate in an illusory game of shifting dimensionality. Aiming to engage inquisitiveness and challenge perception through mapping of spaces her works spark curiosity and invite the viewer to renegotiate their experience of the familiar. Celebrating the legacy of material Petalia continues a family tradition of art making and woodworking- constructing site-responsive built forms that map familiar, and familial, domestic spaces. Humphreys’ practice spans from small-scale hand-crafted paintings through to large site-specific public art installations. Petalia’s work references a history of abstraction, including neo-concretism and the active object.

Petalia is passionate about advocating and promoting the development of rigorous and contemporary arts practices in regional areas. She is founder, producer and curator for Studio 26, a project that curates opportunities for mentoring, critical conversation and exhibitions concerning non-objective and reductive abstraction.