About

Gigi Malherbe’s practice focuses on the incorporation of concealed portraits, Baltic/ Mauritian sites and folklore as a method of exploring her body, vision impairment and cultural history. She continually draws upon her Lithuanian/ Mauritian heritage, often being inspired by and referencing aspects of paganism, mythology and superstition from both cultures. Linking these elements with figurative painting, rendered in high contrasting acrylic palettes, Malherbe creates a dialogue between personal and cultural histories within her works. She presents images that speak to the cathartic experience of grief and ponders the fragility and deterioration of her own body and the emotional journey that accompanies it. 

The Hill of Crosses, based in Šiauliai, Lithuania has frequently acted as a running motif in her work. Its origins formed through the act of placing crosses for victims of conflict, a representation of personal and cultural loss in Lithuania’s history. Interacting with this has influenced her practice in capturing places, stories and rituals that reflect culturally collective experiences of loss and pairing them with her own emotional inner workings to personal loss. In more recent works, fragmented parts of the body, such as eyes and hands occur as a motif in both tumultuous, chaotic environments and also in quiet and contemplative spaces. These representations, rendered in often high contrast, shiny glistening compositions, depict snap shots of parts of bodies in spaces that respond to emotional adversity. 

Fragmented bodies and faces also draw from Malherbe’s inability to see the entirety of a person, due to her permanent retina condition causing a lack of peripheral vision. Her ongoing series of work, Balaclava (2021-present) came to fruition through examining her visual deterioration via utilising textiles, mainly old upholstery samples she comes across to create a camouflaged effect that obscures and hides a subjects face as a balaclava would. Eyes and mouths often disappear and emerge simultaneously as a method of mimicking aspects of perceiving with a vision impairment. 

Malherbe draws imagery for her paintings from various sources including film stills, internet archival sites, mugshot databases, her own medical eye scans and personal photography that influence and shape vignettes of cultural history, personal reflection and glimpses into her own inner conflict and joy. 

Gigi Malherbe is an artist based in Eora/Sydney and who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from National Art School in 2022, majoring in painting. She was apart of the Blue Mountains Portrait prize in 2021, selected as a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize, held at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2022 and was shown at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair in 2023 with the National Art School booth. Her work is held in multiple collections including the National Art School archive and various personal collections across Australia. Malherbe has featured in various publications including Art Collector Magazine and Russh Magazine.