Trick of the Light presents a new body of work by Brisbane artist Heidi Yardley, bringing together paintings created between 2005 and 2025 that explore the uncanny spaces between beauty and unease, memory and invention, presence and disappearance.
Drawing on found imagery from vintage magazines, film stills and printed ephemera, particularly material from the 1970s, Yardley transforms familiar images into psychologically charged paintings that question ideas of glamour, femininity, desire and identity. Rather than celebrating nostalgia, her work reveals the tensions, anxieties and ambiguities that linger beneath carefully constructed images.
The exhibition moves between gothic-inflected works and more recent paintings inspired by faded glamour and fashion imagery. Throughout the exhibition, figures, objects and landscapes become suspended between attraction and discomfort, creating atmospheric spaces where memory, longing and performance intersect. Yardley’s paintings remain deliberately open-ended, inviting viewers into worlds that feel simultaneously intimate and unknowable.
A finalist in numerous major Australian art prizes including the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes, Heidi Yardley is recognised for her distinctive painting practice and her exploration of the psychological dimensions of imagery and representation.
