Rachael Hooper

Rachael Hooper is a Melbourne-based artist whose work blends contemporary still life objects with landscapes and abstract elements. Her evocative and ethereal paintings embrace themes of conflict and duality in ordinary life, contrasting the romance of escape and freedom with the mundane reality of the everyday.
Through layers of paint and subtle colour explorations the process of her painting treads a line between restraint and freedom. Her paintings evoke a snapshot of an image like a memory or a dream.
Rachael has exhibited extensively at galleries and Artist Run Initiatives nationally since 2001. She has been represented by Australian Galleries and on the board of ARI’s for many years. She has been short-listed for several prizes including the Arthur Guy Memorial Prize 2017. She was the winner of the 2008 City of Albany Art Prize and was the recipient of Australia Council grants 2001 and 2008.

Rachael has worked as a painter and props maker in schools, for film and television, theatre and theme parks. She was assistant director of a team of twenty painters in Macau for a year working in casinos and theme parks including a 7-storey volcano roller coaster ride. She now paints in her studio in Preston, Melbourne.

1994-1997 Bachelor of Visual Arts (Sculpture), James
Cook University, Queensland

Solo Exhibitions
2015 Horse Paintings II, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne
2012 Inside and Out, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
2009 Winter Smoke, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
2009 Artist in Residence Show, The Annex, Vancouver Arts Centre, Albany, WA
2008 To get to Bird Lake, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne
2006 Titan Buff, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne
2004 Works on Board, DVAA, Darwin
2002 International Year of Mountains, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne
2001 Small Dome Project, 1st Floor Artists and Writers Space, Melbourne
Horse paintings, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne
Dog paintings, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne
1999 Stuntman, Tenement Gallery, Melbourne

Group Exhibitions
2017 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize Exhibition, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo
2016 Faux Studio, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne
Paintings included in TABLE, publication (True Belief) by Dell Stewart. Launched at West Space, Melbourne
2012 TaskMasters, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne
2011 Asylum Seekers Resource Centre Fundraiser, MARS Gallery, Melbourne
Large exhibition of small works, Australian Galleries, Roylston Street, Sydney
Large exhibition of small works, Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne...