Luke Thurgate is an artist living and working on Gadigal Land (Sydney). He teaches drawing and painting at the National Art School, where he graduated in 2021 with a Master of Fine Art. Luke’s extensive exhibition history includes recent projects at Grafton Regional Gallery, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Backwoods Gallery, Burra Regional Art Gallery, National Art School and Adelaide Central Gallery. He was a finalist in the 2023 Dobell Drawing Prize, the 2022 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, and the 2020 Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Prize.

Luke’s multi-disciplinary studio practice explores the construction and deconstruction of ‘identity’ in relation to sexuality, romance and power. Working across drawing, painting, sculpture and performance, his works appropriates the signifying capacity of the western canon, referencing processes, materials and imagery from Renaissance and Baroque art making.

Luke’s current work uses the monster as a surrogate ’other’ to explore tensions between parody, sincerity, menace, pathos, transgression, and vulnerability. Informed by a range of sources, including popular culture, and Catholic iconography, his practice transcribes the western canon through a lens of queer aesthetics and subjectivity.