N.G Malla

NG Malla’s art practice focuses primarily on urban and domestic landscapes; particularly homes and residential. She is interested in the seemingly ordinary houses and streetscapes across Australia’s inner cities and suburbs and the assumptions we may make about their occupants. After raising four children, in 2019 NG Malla fully committed to her painting practice. Since this time she has been a finalist in numerous selective art exhibitions and prizes, including: the Hawkesbury Art Prize (2023), the Mount Eyre Art Prize (2023), the Blacktown Art Prize (2023), the Lethbridge Landscape Prize (2023, 2024), the Waverley Woollahra 9×5 competition (2022, 2023), the Hunters Hill Art Prize (2022, 2023) and the Greenway Art Prize (2021, 2022).

In this series I am paying tribute to the feelings of affection and nostalgia we hold for places we’ve visited on holidays or weekends, or the people – extended family or dear friends – who’ve welcomed us to their own home. There’s a special aesthetic I associate with the Australian beach houses of the ’60s and ’70s, and these are the main characters in this little series on second homes. I find particular beauty in the ways in which Australia’s intense light and shade spills across the front facades of these homes and the trees and flower gardens which surround them. Our memories make these homes somehow familiar – reminding us perhaps of a student party in an inner city terrace; a family beach holiday; a visit to Grandma’s. In rendering these “house portraits”, I’m allowing their quirky imperfections to shine through my relaxed mark making – these aren’t polished images for a real estate catalogue, but much loved homes and neighbourhoods.