Laith McGregor / Drawing Parallels: A Conversation

In September 2025, DRAW Space presents a new performance by Laith McGregor in collaboration with Joel Cooper - a large scale drawing, an elusive portrait, a silent conversation.

Performance: Friday 12 September, 4pm until late

The work and associated materials will be exhibited until 14 September, 5pm.

Art guides a shared gathering of ideas to harness the imagination, to talk of the unseen, and grapple with issues that are difficult to put into words. It is a way of communicating that creates space to transform and challenge our perception. Throughout human history, art has been the one consistent language that allows humans to navigate the lived experience, to look for the gravitas of truth, to question the existence and that which cannot be explained. Art gives us a sense of the moment, of the now, it’s a way of connecting and sharing ideas through the sensory, a way to surrender and explore the in-between collectively. More importantly, art is the key to guide, and search for answers of why we are here. These ideas are often explored through the drawing and the line.

Biography

Working across drawing, painting and sculpture, Laith McGregor’s multidisciplinary practice reflects an ongoing inquiry into contemporary portraiture, semiotics of image making and notions of the self. With pieces incorporating laborious, hyper-realistic illustration, accumulations of pencil and eraser shavings, and other processes that form a meditative daily ritual, his practice is resolutely underpinned by a commitment to physical studio work and the marking of time. McGregor’s works wrestle with the grey area that exists between fiction and non-fiction, negative and positive, black and white, two- and three- dimensions, serving an ongoing inquiry into the complexities of what it means to be human.

McGregor achieved success early in his career for his intricately drawn works, using ballpoint pen and pencil, winning the Robert Jacks Drawing Prize (2008), the Qantas Foundation Encouragement of Australian Contemporary Art Award (2009), and the Emerging New Work Grant by The Australia Council for the Arts (2009). Since then, he has been the winner of the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, Paul Guest Drawing Prize (2018), National Works on Paper Prize (2012), and the Paul Guest Memorial Prize (2018), and a finalist in many other prizes. He has participated in numerous residencies including Art Omi New York, HIAP Helsinki and the Barcelona Studio residency through the Australian Council for the Arts. He has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally, and is represented in significant institutional collections. McGregor was included in the recent Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2022: FREE STATE, at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Represented by STATION Gallery, Sydney/Melbourne, Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand & Tripoli Gallery, New York.