12/06/2026
Please join us on Friday, June 19 at 5pm for the opening of Against Nature, Neil Emmerson’s first solo exhibition with Hutch.
The exhibition brings together two related bodies of work: The R**e of the Lock (1996) and Against Nature (2025). Presented on the 30th anniversary of The R**e of the Lock, it reflects on enduring themes and processes within my practice.
The R**e of the Lock was developed shortly after I moved to Sydney to teach printmaking at Sydney College of the Arts. After a decade working with large-scale print installations and sculptural forms, I used the project to re-engage with conventional printmaking. Drawing on research materials from an earlier project, Gui Nan Feng (1994–95), including books on Aubrey Beardsley and Chinese revolutionary propaganda, I produced a suite of 123 hand-printed, multi-colour lithographs.
The prints focus on two figures associated with opposing cultural revolutions: Lei Feng, the celebrated communist martyr of Maoist China, and Aubrey Beardsley, whose provocative illustrations embodied the Decadent movement of late nineteenth-century Britain. Through collage and juxtaposition, the works create a satirical dialogue between these contrasting figures and ideologies.
Displayed alongside the surviving prints are new sculptural assemblages collectively titled Against Nature, borrowing its name from J.-K. Huysmans’ influential 1884 novel. Constructed from found materials sourced from op shops, these works combine discarded plastic domestic objects into colourful, ambiguous forms that suggest futuristic architecture, medical devices, ritual objects and adult toys.
The two projects are connected formally through layering, composition, colour and balance, and conceptually through satire and transformation. In Against Nature, mass-produced utilitarian objects are reimagined as unique sculptural forms, extending the ironic tensions explored in The R**e of the Lock and creating a dialogue between decoration, desire, politics and cultural history.
