Myth Makers

Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf
27/5/2026 - 23/8/2026

Bringing together painting, sculpture, film and installation, Myth Makers reflects on the ways myth is constructed, performed and circulated in contemporary life.

The exhibition features works by Adele Warner, Andrew Thomas Huang, Annabelle McEwen, Bridget Stehli, George Raftopolous, Gian Manik, Jordan Gogos, Oscar Sulich, Sanné Mestrom and Vincent Namatjira.

The works respond to the forces that form contemporary subjectivity, from digital image cultures and systems of surveillance to inherited histories, ritual and collective memory. Some works explore how the self is constructed through performance, projection and repetition; others consider how myth operates across folklore, ancestry and lived experience.

Myth Makers highlights the porous boundaries between the physical and symbolic realms, and the ways in which their interplay continues to shape how we imagine ourselves and the world around us.

Annabelle McEwen, Friction/Fiction (transubstantiation/doppelgänger), 2026, cast cement, acrylic, toner, resin, tactile studs, stained pine wood, 50 x 57cm, photography by Leif Prenzlau

Annabelle McEwen, Facade Map Tile (surprise), (anger), (disgust), (joy), (sadness) and (fear), 2025, dye sublimation print on carpet tile, 50 x 50 cm (each), photography by Leif Prenzlau

Installation shot of Annabelle McEwen’s work in Myth Makers at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf

Annabelle McEwen, Data Composite, 2024, ink cast in plaster, 18 x 18 x 2 cm

Annabelle McEwen, Echo: Autofabrication, 2024, polylactic acid and polyethylene terephthalate glycol print, 26 x 18 x 9 cm and Self Scan B (photogrammetry), 2023, image transfer on aluminium, 25 x 25 cm

In Greek mythology a young and handsome Narcissus falls fatally in love with his own reflection, unable to tear himself away he eventually fades into little more than a small flower. Reflected, ruined, and then remade, the tale of Narcissus, as with the works in Myth Makers, mirrors the power of myth to construct and corrupt self.

Through a series of self portraits Myth Makers interprets myths of nationhood and family, authorship and agency, paradise and mortality, as vital to visions of self. A constellation of painting, sculpture, film and installation, the exhibition charts how age-old ideas of ritual and inheritance intersect with contemporary forces of digital image culture and surveillance systems to form, and fragment, modern identity.

Bringing together works by Andrew Thomas Huang, Gian Manik, Annabelle McEwen, Sanné Mestrom, Vincent Namatjira, Bridget Stehli Curnow, Oscar Sulich, Adele Warner, Jordan Gogos, and George Raftopolous, Myth Makers presents myth as a process through which community, culture and personhood can be articulated and understood.

Less a mirror than the surface of an ancient lake, Myth Makers reflects a world rippling and blurring with the echoes of past, future and imagined selves.

Annabelle McEwen, Self Scan B (photogrammetry), 2023, image transfer on aluminium, 25 x 25 cm

Annabelle McEwen, Friction/Fiction (transubstantiation/doppelgänger), 2026, cast cement, acrylic, toner, resin, tactile studs, stained pine wood, 50 x 57cm

Annabelle McEwen, Friction/Fiction (transubstantiation/doppelgänger), 2026, cast cement, acrylic, toner, resin, tactile studs, stained pine wood, 50 x 57cm, photography by Leif Prenzlau

Annabelle McEwen, Data Composite, 2024, ink cast in plaster, 18 x 18 x 2 cm

Annabelle McEwen, Facade Map Tile (surprise), (anger), (disgust), (joy), (sadness) and (fear), 2025, dye sublimation print on carpet tile, 50 x 50 cm (each), photography by Leif Prenzlau

Annabelle McEwen, Data Composite, 2024, ink cast in plaster, 18 x 18 x 2 cm (top) also featuring works by Sanné Mestrom (floor left) and Vincent Namatjira (wall right)

Annabelle McEwen, Friction/Fiction (transubstantiation/doppelgänger), 2026, cast cement, acrylic, toner, resin, tactile studs, stained pine wood, 50 x 57cm (left) also featuring work by Adele Warner, FORTRESS OF MY BODY (the set of narcissistic operations), (right)

Installation shot of Myth Makers at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf inclduing works by Annabelle McEwen and Bridget Stehli

Annabelle McEwen, Friction/Fiction (transubstantiation/doppelgänger), 2026, cast cement, acrylic, toner, resin, tactile studs, stained pine wood, 50 x 57cm (right) also featuring work Flesh Nest by Andrew Thomas Huang (left)

Annabelle McEwen, Facade Map Tile (surprise), (anger), (disgust), (joy), (sadness) and (fear), 2025, dye sublimation print on carpet tile, 50 x 50 cm (each), photography by Leif Prenzlau

Progression into the future demands the past recedes into the mists of time. As we move ever faster onward it becomes exponentially more difficult to make out details from our history. The endless documentation, editing and enactment of self that contemporary culture demands mean identity itself has receded into the realm of myth.

Not unlike an archaeologist relying upon only fragments of pottery, the advent of new technologies, from social media and surveillance automations to Al, means we are left with ever muddier archives from which to recall our authentic selves. Ceaselessly observed the individual exists in fractured forms across platforms and planes, artefacts able to be appropriated into fullness by whomever digs them up first.

Here works excavate ancient, new and adapted selves to interrogate ideas of identity construction and authorship.

Annabelle McEwen, Echo: Autofabrication, 2024, polylactic acid and polyethylene terephthalate glycol print, 26 x 18 x 9 cm, photography by Leif Prenzlau

Annabelle McEwen, Cameo: Construction of Servers (sadness), (anger), (joy), (disgust), (fear) and (surprise), 2025, portland cement, graded sand, calcium aluminate cement, calcium carbonate, polyvinyl acetate homopolymer resin, 25.5 x 21 x 15 cm (each), and Facade Map Tile (surprise), (anger), (disgust), (joy), (sadness) and (fear), 2025, dye sublimation print on carpet tile, 50 x 50 cm (each), photography by Leif Prenzlau

Annabelle McEwen, Facade Map Tile (surprise), (anger), (disgust), (joy), (sadness) and (fear), 2025, dye sublimation print on carpet tile, 50 x 50 cm (each), photography by Leif Prenzlau

Like telling fortunes through the stars, or seeing a smiling face in the shape of the clouds, our social interactions with Al technologies embody the human impulse to impose meaning on what is meaningless - formulas, numbers and equations. What happens then, when those algorithms begin to look back and interpret our passion as units of code?

Archived datasets, like the Cohn-Kanade Dataset, establish hundreds of standardised human facial expressions which are then used by governments and corporations to register, interpret, and store human facial expressions as captured by cameras across private and public spaces. An interrogation of the impact this kind of ubiquitous surveillance has on human agency Annabelle McEwen's Facade Map Tile (surprise), (anger), (disgust), (joy), (sadness) and (fear) collages the artist's own face as she performs facial expressions Machine-Learning (Al) models are trained to recognise then categorise.

A literal and figurative flattening of feeling Facade Map Tile (surprise), (anger), (disgust), (joy), (sadness) and (fear) reflects how the indexing of human expression reduces emotion to a pattern which can be enacted, or enforced, to support an ever-narrowing scope of emotional motivations and complexity.

Annabelle McEwen, Friction/Fiction (transubstantiation/doppelgänger), 2026, cast cement, acrylic, toner, resin, tactile studs, stained pine wood, 50 x 57cm

Annabelle McEwen, Data Composite, 2024, ink cast in plaster, 18 x 18 x 2 cm (top) also featuring work by George Raftopoulos and Jordan Gogos (hung)

Installation shot of Myth Makers at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf inclduing works by Annabelle McEwen and Oscar Sulich