Love is in the Air is a new exhibition by JP Willis that explores the ethics of visibility, concealment, and the aestheticisation of violence. Through a visual language of camouflage, pattern, and repetition, Willis examines the ways conflict is obscured, normalised, and embedded within contemporary culture.
The exhibition presents camouflage as both material and metaphor. Bejewelled fences and barbed wire oscillate between attraction and danger, while ordered patterns evoke ritual, repetition, and military tactics. Together, these elements encourage reflection on how violence is hidden in plain sight and how viewers become complicit in systems of looking.
The works also draw attention to society’s enduring fascination with violence as mediated through television, film, and photography. In recent years, Willis worked closely with renowned war photographer Tim Page OAM (1944–2022). The two artists were developing an exhibition responding to one another’s practices at the time of Page’s passing, a relationship that continues to inform the conceptual underpinnings of this body of work.
Originally from Llandudno in North Wales, JP Willis now lives and works on Gumbaynggirr Country in the hinterland of Coffs Harbour. A past recipient of Southern Cross University’s Acquisitive Artists’ Book Award and an Australia Print Council commission, Willis’ work is held in major national and international collections including Tate Britain, the British Library, Columbia University, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Library of Australia, and the State Library of Queensland.
Opening Event
Thursday 4 June 2026
6:00pm – 8:00pm
