Mike Nicholls

Mike Nicholls has been a practicing sculptor for over two decades. He has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Nicholls has also received several public commissions for his work including, restaurant paintings at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Outdoor sculpture at the Malthouse Theatre and furniture at Linden Gallery, St Kilda. Mike Nicholls work is represented in the public collections of Tarawarra Art Museum, VIC; Shoreham Park Collection, VIC; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne; Shepparton Art Gallery, VIC; Bankstown Regional Gallery, NSW; Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW; Sir William Dobell Art Foundations, Sydney; Cambeltown Art Gallery, NSW and the Gold Coast Regional Art Gallery, QLD, and in private collections nationally.

Mike Nicholls is a multidisciplinary artist producing expressive figurative wooden sculptures, oil paintings and works on paper. The process of creation is evident in the gestural refinement of all his works that impart a conveyed feeling of warmth and sensitivity. According to Nicholls, his painting and sculpture ‘renders a tribal expressionism…in a unique and powerful language through the motifs of the shield, spirit and human presence’ represented in his individual works. The shield and the spirit are presented as protective devices that convey the uncertainty of the times we live in. Nicholls believes this is particularly relevant to today’s society, as quite often ‘we refer too much of society in tribal terms’.