Sydney Contemporary Art Fair
August 26, 2025
Steve’s work will be featured at Sydney Contemporary, Australia’s biggest art fair. He will have a selection of his newest work on show from the series “Everyone’s Amazing”.
He is represented by Mitchell Fine Art and you can find them at Stand JO1. The Art Fair runs from September 11 – 14th. For more details on Steve’s new work, contact:
www.mitchellfineartgallery.com
The State Library of NSW – Acquisition
August 26, 2025
The State Library of NSW recently acquired 20 of Steve’s drawings for its collections.
The works were part of a series called Merrylands, which were done over the course of a few years. The project- involved sketching direct from life, contemporary drawings of immigrants and refugees living in the culturally rich, Western Sydney suburb.
Steve visited the area regularly, drawing locals, migrants and refugees on the streets of this multiculturally rich suburb. He drew and got to know the locals who generously sat for the artist.
The works are now in the permanent collection of @statelibrarynsw. Great to have the support of important cultural institutions backing local artist projects.
2025 – Project Updates
April 16, 2025
Everyone’s Amazing Sydney Contemporary. 11 – 14 September 2025
Steve Lopes Mitchell Fine Art QLD, 21 October – 15 November
Greece & Crete: Artists of the Second World War Greece, 12 – 24 October
Steve has a busy year in 2025. He will be exhibiting as the representative artist for Mitchell Fine Art at The Sydney Contemporary Art Fair with a new body of work titled ” Everyone’s Amazing”. Pop by the Mitchell Fine Art stand and view the new work. His new solo show will also be exhibited at the Brisbane gallery from October 21st – November 11 . Register your interest @ https://mitchellfineartgallery.com/
Steve will also be undertaking an artist Project trip in Greece and Crete in October 2025 with a well known group of artists. They will be following in the footsteps of Anzac troops from WWII with War historian Brad Manera for a number of exhibitions in 2026 .
He is also currently the feature artist at Clayton Utz head offices in Sydney as part of the 333 Projects and The Clayton Utz Art Partnership. This is an exciting initiative and demonstrates the pride of an Australian Law firm committed to the cultural sector, and the broader creative communities in which we live and work.
view the exhibition here: view @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dob3lK0F5ZY
New York Exhibition @ Thomas VanDyke Gallery
January 22, 2024
Steve recently held his first solo exhibition in New York City “The Figure Renewed”. The works selected by gallery Director Thomas VanDyke highlighted Lopes’s poetic portrayals of the figure in place. Having trained in New York earlier in the artist’s career, Lopes was pleased to return to NYC – a place which was pivotal in forming the artist’s practice and view of the importance of the figure in his art.
“The Figure Renewed” exhibited, March 14 until April 5th
enquiries @ Thomas VanDyke Gallery , 434 39th Street, Brooklyn NY, 11232, USA
https://thomasvandyke.com/past-exhibitions#/steve-lopes/
AGNSW Talk
October 9, 2023
Steve recently spoke at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The Artist in Conversation series with Maria Stoljar, host and producer of the Talking with painters podcast, presented an in-conversation with Steve about his creative practice.
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/whats-on/events/artists-in-conversation-online/
‘Shapes For Gods’
August 21, 2023
Media release –
Exhibition @ Mitchell Fine Art – Brisbane
10 October – 4 November 2023
“One of the abiding features of Lopes’ work is its powerful humanism. He is interested in the everyday rather than the exceptional. He tries to get under the skin of a place by looking at the way ordinary people go about their daily activities.”
John McDonald, Australia’s leading art critic, April 2022
Over the past 25 years, Steve Lopes has had more than 45 solo exhibitions across Australia and around the world. In 2022, his touring survey show, ‘Encountered’, with accompanying book, was held at Sydney’s SH Ervin Gallery and toured to Orange Regional Gallery to great acclaim. Lopes has been awarded numerous art prizes, including the Gallipoli Art Award and the prestigious King’s School Art Prize. His work is held in numerous institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia and Parliament House Canberra.
In this new series, Lopes thinks deeply about the world around him and excitedly tries to express it visually. These ambitious new works aim to show people in the natural world now, with their new realities and accompanying paraphernalia. The artist himself says; “Sometimes the figure is stripped bare, sometimes totally absent, leaving behind only remnants of their existence. I am trying to capture and reveal the secrets and stories behind these eclectic subjects through their connections to objects, icons and their encompassing surroundings.”
The paintings are colourful, free and unafraid. Filled with curiosity, the artist’s growing fluency aims to bridge worlds between reality and memory, and to reveal a strange, difficult truth both materially and subliminally through paint.
Lopes’s figurative works are uniquely his own, with a sought-after, highly recognisable style. These new works have a life of their own, and with each work comes a rush of great perception and insight.
Register your interest @www.mitchellfineartgallery.com
Encountered – New book available to order
April 5, 2022
‘Steve Lopes’ work is enormously diverse in imagery and content. It is a celebration of the enduring spirit of humanity and the power of connection.’ Anne Ryan, senior curator AGNSW
Steve Lopes Encountered was a survey exhibition of over 80 paintings from 2003 to 2021. It recently showed at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, and at the Orange Regional Gallery. A new book accompanying the exhibition is available from the galleries’ stores for $35.
Steve Lopes is a Sydney-based painter known for his figurative landscapes. He often works en plein air, painting vignettes of places that are used as references for large-scale studio works.
Curated by Kon Gouriotis, the exhibition considered how the artist reflects on our age of complexity, volatility and crisis through thematic narratives of migration and place, of the body on the land and the land without body. The emergence of voids, barriers and paths that appear and reappear play an important role in Lopes’ work, and provide insights into his philosophy regarding representation and the social and art context through which his scenes of harshness and kindness emerge.
Book available for $35 from S.H. Ervin shop and Orange Regional Gallery.
or order directly at: lopesstudio@gmail.com
Online: https://www.shervingallery.com.au/shop-books/
Steve Lopes- Encountered. Survey Exhibitions 2022
January 10, 2022
Steve Lopes’ work was the subject of a major exhibition surveying a quarter-century of his work.
“Steve Lopes’ work is enormously diverse in imagery and content. It is a celebration of the enduring spirit of humanity and the power of connection.” Anne Ryan, senior curator, AGNSW
Encountered was a major survey exhibition of works from 1997 to 2021, including rarely seen drawings, prints and collages, together with the artist’s diaries and drawing books. Curated by Kon Gouriotis, the exhibition considers how the artist reflects on our age of complexity, volatility and crisis through thematic narratives of migration and place, the body on the land and the land without the body, providing thoughtful insights into his philosophy.
The show included 120 works, with more than 80 paintings, and rarely seen drawings, prints and collages. Anne Ryan, curator of Australian Art at the AGNSW, recently wrote of the show “Steve Lopes is an artist who finds himself at once everywhere and nowhere. An inveterate traveller since his youth, his insatiable curiosity for new experiences drives his art and desire to tell stories, connecting the threads of history and place with the people who have shaped them.”
Steve Lopes- Encountered: exhibited at SH Ervin Gallery, 26 March until 8 May 2022
https://www.shervingallery.com.au
& Orange Regional Gallery , 20 May until 16 July 2022
https://www.orange.nsw.gov.au/gallery/
Order the 130page fully Illustrated Catalogue @ lopes_studio
Kings School Art Prize Winner
May 25, 2021
Orange Venus – Winner of the 27th King’s Art Prize.
Steve recently won the Prestigous Kings School Art Award. This prize-winning work in the form of oil on canvas relates to Steve Lopes connection with the Central Western town of Orange in NSW. The figures, set at Lake Canobolas, depicts the artist’s affinity for the area, evoking a spiritual sense of interaction between the figures and environment. The artist’s experience of witnessing the Transit of Venus in Orange years ago inspired his celestial motifs, capturing a magical and serene narrative.
Over the last 27 years, The King’s School Art Prize has proudly included such artists and prize winners as: Aida Tomescu, John Olsen, Nicholas Harding, Gloria Petyarre, Ross Laurie, Euan Macleod and Peter Godwin to name a few.
Artist Profile – Front Cover
September 28, 2020
Steve was recently the main feature artist for the latest Artist Profile magazine, one of Australia’s most respected art journals.Currently available from www.artistprofile.com.au/category/back-issues/.