In Visitors, Monica Rohan presents a captivating new body of work in which chairs — long-time domestic companions — find themselves adrift in the landscape. Removed from their familiar interiors, they become uncanny stand-ins for the human form: both present and absent, invited and forgotten.
For Rohan, these bentwood chairs carry deep personal resonance. “They were the chairs around my family’s kitchen table growing up,” she reflects. “Their simple, elegant yet rickety forms play off against the landscape to express relationships between people, places and objects. I like to think of them as taking my family, my past and those memories of home with me to the places I visit.”
Across rainforest pools, dawn-soaked sands, and suburban thickets, these objects gather, sink, and re-emerge — binding together times and places of personal significance. The compositions evoke movement and transition, contemplating what it means to visit, to connect, and to move on, leaving traces of memory behind.
“Taking myself out of my paintings has been freeing,” says Rohan. “The chairs themselves are so characterful that I feel like a director, shuffling the roles they’re playing into different scenarios, searching for ways to evoke an emotional response to them.”
About the Artist:
Monica Rohan has been a finalist in major national prizes including the Archibald Prize (2020, 2016), Brisbane Portrait Prize (2025, 2024, 2022, 2021), Dobell Drawing Prize (2019), Sulman Prize (2017), and Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2018). Her work is represented in numerous collections including QAGOMA, Museum of Brisbane, Artbank, and University of Queensland Art Museum.
Image: Monica Rohan, Princes Street Garden, 2025, oil on board, 70.0 x 100.0 cm
