Michael Zavros: The Favourite

Overview

From Saturday, June 24–Monday, October 2, filling Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art for winter as well as the start of spring, Michael Zavros: The Favourite is serving up a major survey of the Queensland artist. On display: 90-plus paintings, sculptures, videos, photos and performances, as part of one of GOMA's two big midyear exhibitions (the other: eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness).

With The Favourite, GOMA looks back across 25 years of Zavros' art — although Drowned Mercedes is brand new. Created for the exhibition, the sculpture fills the cabin of an original classic 90s Mercedes-Benz SL convertible with water. When attendees peer at the piece, they see their own reflection in the water.

Other Zavros highlights include paintings including Man in a wool suit and Ferragamo 2000, which take inspiration from men's magazines; the Prince/Zavros, with American conceptual artist Richard Prince's late-80s Cowboy images and Marlboro Man tobacco ads an influence; architectural representations Love's temple and Unicorn in the anticamera; and a heap of portraits, with Zavros himself a frequent subject.

Still-life works; equestrian paintings, drawings and sculptures; depictions of rare Japanese Onagadori chickens: they all grace GOMA's walls and halls, too. So does Acropolis Now, a large-scale mural depicting the Parthenon in Athens, which is being turned into a Greek coffee house once a month thanks to folks from Brisbane's Greek community playing backgammon and sipping Greek caffeinated beverages.

Images: installation views of Michael Zavros: The Favourite, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2023. © Michael Zavros and eX de Medici / Photographs: Joe Ruckli © QAGOMA.