Z O E Y O U N G
ABOUT
Zoe Young is an Australian painter known for her cinematic approach to portraiture and still life. Her work constructs scenes rather than images—layered compositions that explore status, intimacy, and the rituals of everyday life.
Drawing on travel across Europe, Asia, and America, Young’s paintings move between observation and staging, where food, interiors, and figures become charged with narrative and psychological tension.
A graduate of the National Art School, she is a multiple Archibald, Sulman and Sovereign Art Prize finalist.
EXHIBITIONS
Represented by Philip Bacon Galleries, Sophie Gannon Gallery and Olsen Gallery, Young has exhibited consistently since graduating from the National Art School, Sydney, in 2012.
Her exhibitions, spanning Australia and international contexts including Los Angeles, Thailand and Thredbo Resort, trace a practice grounded in painting’s capacity to return to and rework familiar subjects.
Across these presentations, Young’s works build a cumulative language, each exhibition extending the last, while her inclusion in major national awards and shortlistings sits alongside this ongoing, iterative approach.
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Something for Margaret
OLSEN GALLERY
2026“I often look to cinema when constructing a body of work. In film, we are rarely watching only the characters; we are absorbing the vignettes of their lives — the landscapes they inhabit, the quiet details, the rhythm created through repetition and scale. Directors use framing, pacing and shifts in size to give a story its pulse.”
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Laissez Faire + The Witzig Archive
SOPHIE GANNON GALLERY
2025Zoe Young’s recent body of work grew from a self-imposed “camera detox.” Determined to paint only from life, she set herself the task of seeing without mediation; of unlearning the instant, image-ready habits rewarded by the capitalist attention economy of the present. What began as an act of discipline became a meditation on perception, temporality and the quiet structures of daily life.
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The Sentimental Bloke
MELBOURNE ART FAIR
2025
Zoe Young’s exhibition, The Sentimental Bloke, derives from Vollmann’s novel, and the obscurity of her titling becomes clear through the artists search for ideals that don't, and perhaps never existed, through heavy-leaning into the rich genre of still life in all its multitudinal forms and meanings. Both Jimmy and Young debase, devour and possess their subjects in an attempt to reach something unknown, unreal, pure yet totally unattainable.
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Field Notes
PHILLIP BACON GALLERIES
2025A small salon show of studies from life exploring the everyday world of the artist.
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The Alpine Way
SOPHIE GANNON GALLERY
2024
Blending personal history and collective memory, Young’s work spans four generations of her family. Through a series of figurative, still life, and landscape paintings, she collages time and place, distilling folklore, family rituals, and village life. -
The Long Weekend
SOPHIE GANNON GALLERY
2024
The long weekend embodies a yearning for anticipation, tradition, and even a temporary escape from the ordinary – a fleeting yet cherished interlude amidst the ebb and flow of life's rhythms.
AWARDS
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ARCHIBALD PRIZE
ART GALLERY OF NSW
2023 / FINALISTLatrell + Winmarra
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ARCHIBALD PRIZE
ART GALLERY OF NSW
2024 / FINALISTJill’s ay Bills
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SULMAN PRIZE
2017 / FINALIST
99 LUFTBALLOONS
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PORTIA GEACH ART PRIZE
2018 / WINNER
BRUCE BERESFORD / DRAWING STORYBOARDS
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ARCHIBALD PRIZE
2015 / FINALIST
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THE PORTIA GEACH
S.H. ERVIN GALLERY
2023 / FINALIST
Portrait of Frank Prihoda
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THREDBO SEASON PASS
THREDBO RESORT
2025 / SEASON PASS ARTWORK
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CALLEEN ART PRIZE
COWRA REGIONAL ART GALLERY
2018 / WINNER
Crackenback
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SALON DE REFUSES
S.H. ERVIN GALLERY
2022 / FINALIST
Portrait of Allegra + Bianca Spender
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ARCHIBALD PRIZE
2012 / FINALIST
TORAH BRIGHT
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SALON DE REFUSES
2017 / FINALIST
Lucy Eating Sushi in Monmartre