Zoe Young: The Sea is the Key, the Ocean is the Potion

Fascinated by the simple beauty of the everyday, Zoe Young works between still life, portraiture and abstraction to capture her delight in life’s fleeting moments, turning them into something intimate, revelatory and long-lasting.

The distillation of experiences and sensations is at the heart of Young’s practice. Originally trained in sculpture, her boldly feminine works are underpinned by a solid foundation of modernist theory and considered technical approaches to colour, composition and mark making.

Zoe Young trained at the National Art School (NAS), Sydney, under Ron Robertson-Swanns, an apprentice of Henry Moore. In 2018, Young won the Portia Geach Memorial Art Prize, the Margaret Olley Award at Mosman Art Gallery, and the Pirtek Still Life Award at Bowral Art Gallery. A finalist in the 2019 Sir John Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW, she is a two time finalist in both the Archibald Prize (2016, 2014) and the Calleen Art Prize (2018, 2017), and was a finalist in the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize (2018), the Portia Geach Memorial Art Prize (2017), the Mosman Art Prize (2017), Salon des Refusés, S. H. Ervin Gallery (2017), Cooks Gallery Emerging Art Prize, Newcastle (2015), and the Wingcarribee Art Prize, Southern Highlands (2015). In 2014, Young was Highly Commended in the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize, as well as Yen Magazine’s annual Female Artist of the Year. In 2013 she won the Snowy Mountains Art Prize, and was Highly Commended in the John Briscoe Memorial Art Award at Raglan Gallery, Cooma. Her work has toured extensively throughout Australia in group and solo shows, and was shown at Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, in 2018.

For more information: Edwina Corlette Gallery