Brisbane-born, Berlin-based artist Karla Marchesi employs the still life genre as a means through which to reflect upon socio-cultural anxieties of our age. Her paintings theatrically critique what it means to be human at this present moment under conditions of late capitalism and anthropocentrism, interweaving an allegoric deconstruction of ideological systems with autobiography, pathos and humour.

Marchesi has Bachelor of Fine Art (2004) and Honours in Fine Art (2007) degrees from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, where she received the University Medal for academic excellence and the Honours Thesis Prize. Marchesi received the Philip Bacon Galleries Prize for Excellence in Drawing in 2003, enabling her to study for a semester at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, US.Marchesi has held solo exhibitions in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, and internationally in Singapore, Luxembourg and Germany. In 2012 she undertook a studio residency at Atelierhaus Mengerzeile, Berlin that preceded her first international solo exhibition at Kunsthalle M3, Berlin. Marchesi is a recipient of the 1st Prize in the Redland Art Awards (2010), the Wilson Visual Arts Award (2012) and an Australia Council for the Arts Early Career New Work Grant (2013). Her work is included in a number of public collections including the Museum of Brisbane, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Queensland Art Museum, the Australian Catholic University and several regional galleries.

She is represented by Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

www.karlamarchesi.com