Michelle Hanlin (born in Melbourne, now living and working in Sydney) has exhibited paintings and sculpture since 1999. Hanlin’s work embodies a relationship between sculpture, painting and colour. Her early works depicted figurative tableaux scenes, more recently creating images through painting and collage that refer to flat and emblematic frontal compositions with a suggestion of Bas-relief or sculptural shadowing. Hanlin often uses the meeting point of figuration and abstraction in her work with the abstracted images of manufactured and natural elements creating a psychic tension in our relationship to those things and the meanings we bestow upon them.
In Hanlin’s latest work, she uses imagery derived from objects of inherited household collections, piecing together new and altered existences for them.
Hanlin’s first solo exhibition at Gallery 9 was in 2007, with eight to date. She studied Sculpture at Sydney College of the Arts and was awarded a first-class honours degree. She has exhibited interstate and internationally in group exhibitions.
Hanlin was a finalist in the Helen Lempriere travelling scholarship, RBS Emerging Artist Award and the Fishers Ghost Art Award.
Her work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, MCA, Artbank, Wollongong City Gallery, and numerous private collections around Australia.