Conscious Uncouplings, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: ZAN WIMBERLEY.
Michelle Eskola is a Finnish-Australian abstract artist exploring light, installation, and perception. Michelle works with pigments and translucent materials that interact with light to create layered, shifting visual fields.
Her practice focuses on the basic elements of art: colour, line, and their interacting layers. Her works unfold through a continuous and technically exacting process that extends, repeats, falters, begins again, and is never through.
Michelle’s artworks are included in the public collections of the Museum of Brisbane, Gadens Lawyers, and hospitals throughout South East Queensland, as well as private collections in Australia, Finland, and Japan.
Michelle has a background in video and photography, began exploring light as a medium in 2008, and continues her practice-led exploration, hand-making her works in her Melbourne home studio.
Select Exhibitions
2018 Artist in Residence, Museum of Brisbane (solo)
2018 Scroll, STABLE Art Space
2017 Atmospheres and Stability, Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane (solo)
2016 Collectibles VI, Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane
2016 Actual/Potential Matter, SEVENTH Gallery, Melbourne (solo)
2016 (Every) Now and Then/Again, Blindside Gallery, Melbourne (collaboration)
2016 Less, The Laundry Art Space, Brisbane
2016 Conscious Uncouplings, Firstdraft, Sydney (collaboration)
2015 Collectibles V, Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane
2015 Program Launch, Metro Arts, Brisbane
2015 Luminous Plastic, Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane (solo)
2015 D&M, Metro Arts, Brisbane (collaboration)
2015 On Air, Jugglers Art Space, Brisbane
2014 Collectibles IV, Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane
2014 Räyättää, Woolloongabba Art Gallery, Brisbane (solo)
2014 Melbourne Art Fair, Inbetweenspaces Polyamorous Living Lab, Melbourne
2009 Revenge of the Ramstag Scholarship Kids, The Block, Brisbane
2008 Fresher, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
2008 Ramstag Scholarship Kids, the Block and H Block Gallery, Brisbane
2007 ITouch, Metro Arts, Brisbane
2007 Viewfinder, Metro Arts, Brisbane
2006 Transmute, The Block, Brisbane
Collections
2018 Museum of Brisbane
2017 Creative Thinking - Positive Solutions Art Collection, Brisbane
2017 Gadens Lawyers Public Art Collection, Brisbane
2015 Mater Health Services Public Art Collection, Curatorial selection
2015 Sunshine Coast University Hospital Public Art Collection, Curatorial selection
Awards
2018 Artist in Residence, Museum of Brisbane, supported by Tim Fairfax AC
2016 Noosa Art Award (Finalist) Noosa Regional Gallery, Sunshine Coast
2015 Clayton Utz Art Award (Finalist) Clayton Utz Law Firm, Brisbane
Education & Achievements
2021 Creative Thinking: Strategic Projects, Node Centre for Curatorial Studies, Berlin
2007 – 2008 Honours Fine Arts (Visual Art), Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
2005 – 2007 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Art) QUT
2014 Chair, Visual Arts Association, South Bank Institute of Technology.
2014 Brian Tucker Award for Outstanding Overall Achievement in Visual Arts, South Bank Institute of Technology.
2007 – 2008 Tim Fairfax AC Learning Potential Fund Scholarship Award, QUT.