SongsofLoveandLoss
28 Oct -15 Nov 2025
Troy-Anthony Baylis
Songs of Love and Loss
Songs of Love and Loss is a ‘compilation exhibition’ that brings together new work as well as selections from the artist’s back catalogue including work previously unseen. Most works in the exhibition reference music and all are bound by two powerful emotional themes: love and loss.
The earliest work is I’ve believed in Kylie since 1987 2004. It is a relatively early work in the artist’s ongoing series of inscribed oil paintings that began in the late 1990s called Immediacy Paintings. This work could also sit within the artists’ cannon of diva workshop, in this instance Baylis’s love for Kylie Minogue. She is one such diva who is referenced multiple times throughout the artist’s visual and performance practice that criss-crosses into collecting and the artist’s ‘archival tendencies’. I’ve believed in Kyliesince19872004istheonlyImmediacyPaintingtodatethatisnotamonochrome-it’stwoprinciplecoloursmergediagonally and it is glitter-coated. As subject it converses in response to the Kylie Minogue song I Believe In You (2004) that had just been released and also makes a visual reference to the Kylie promotional single art design.
Amongst the suite of Immediacy Paintings included is the most recent Jesus Mary & Josephine Baker 2025. Gold paint and proportion essentially make it an icon painting, and so this is the artist canonising dancer, singer, actor, and civil rights activist Josephine Baker in a not dissimilar way Andy Warhol canonised Marilyn Monroe. The artist is also inspired by her iconic imagery andresiliencetoshinebeyondtheoppressionofhertimeincludingbyherowncommunity.Althoughtherealityofheradoptionof 12 children from different ethnicities was not utopian, the idea of ethnic diversity in unity and the creation of a Rainbow Tribe was ultimately highly progressive and inspirational.
Another brand-new work that can also be situated in the devotional is The Mourning After 2025 [2nd iteration]. It is an ongoing work of devotion and an interpretive performance of J. S. Bach’s St. Luke’s Passion from approximately 1770. “My body as an adolescent gay in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s (and gay bodies everywhere) became strongly associated with contagion dis/ease and death. The Mourning After is a devotional work of love and a monument to lives lost in particular gay friends and community lost to the AIDS pandemic”.
A further major new work making its debut consists of 7 large textile objects that are hard-woven and embroidered. It references shieldsandaJennyHolzertruismwoodenpostcardasscaffoldingtoarticulatetheartists’complexandpersonalexperiencewith Stolen Generations and looted cultural artefacts: Abuse Of Stolen Comes As No Surprise 2025.
SongsofLoveandLossalsoincludesworksfrom3furtherseriesofwork:(pink)Poles(2006-2007),TellThemTheirDreaming(2019/2020) and Two Hearts (2022-)
Go ahead and google the artist and these bodies of work… go on… do it now!
TheirDreaming(Prince),2020,Die-cutstickersonplastic-coatedpaperm50x60.7cm,$1,200
Left:TheirDreaming(KylieMinogue),2019,Die-cutstickersonplastic-coatedpaper,50x60.7cm,$1,200
Right:TheirDreaming(ABBA),2019,Die-cutstickersonplastic-coatedpaper,50x60.7cm,$1,200
Die-cut stickers
Their Dreaming (Bobby Darin), 2020
on plastic-coated paper, 50 x 60.7cm, $1,200
Die-cut stickers
Their Dreaming (Mariah Carey), 2019
on plastic-coated paper, 50 x 60.7cm, $1,200
Their Dreaming (Eurythmics)
2019
Die-cut stickers on plastic-coated paper
50 x 60.7cm
$1,200
Two Hearts (Kylie Minogue) 2022, sliced and rewoven acrylic on linen, embroidery cotton, 70 x 80cm, $5,800
Image by Grant Hancock
Two Hearts (Prince) 2022, sliced and rewoven acrylic on linen, embroidery cotton, buttons, 70 x 80cm, $5,800
image by Grant Hancock
Abuse Of Stolen Comes As No Surprise, 2025, Hand-woven and embroidered acrylic, 7 components approx 60 x 42cm each, $28,000
Agadoo me under The Big Pinapple, 2024, Oil on linen, 22 x 27cm, $1,100
carmen miranda you can do it!, 2022, Oil on linen
24.5 x 29.5 cm $1,300
I’ve believed in Kylie since 1987 2004 Oil and glitter on canvas
47 x 47cm, $1,400
You Don’t Know Me You Don’t Klaus Nomi 2019 Oil on linen
25 x 20cm $950
Jesus Mary & Josephine
Josephine Baker 2025 Oil on linen
25 x 20cm, $1,100
black betty and betty white meet at the grey bar, grey bar, 2021 Oil on linen
32 x 27cm, $1,200
More nana-mouskourious than bi-curious 2021 Oil on linen
23.5 x 29.5 cm, $1,100
you want a Maserati? you better workbench 2022 Oil on linen
29 x 34.5 cm, $1,200
The Mourning After 2025 [second iteration] Lipstick on 185gsm art paper, diptych 76.5 x 57cm each, $1,800 (pink) Pole 4 2006 Knitted acrylic (pink) Pole 9 2007 Knitted acrylic SIZE, $1,800 each
54 Vernon Terrace, Teneriffe QLD 4005 info@janmantonart.com janmantonart.com 0419 657 768
Gallery Director
Jan Manton
Gallery Manager
Isabella Wright
Gallery Assistant
Safron Holford
Jan Manton Gallery