Gerwyn Davies b.1985, Sunburn 2025, archival pigment print, Courtesy the artist, Jan Murphy Gallery (Brisbane) and Michael Reid Gallery (Sydney/Berlin). © The artist
From 3 July 2026 Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre will present a major new body of work by Gadigal/Sydney-based artist Gerwyn Davies.
Sunburn: Gerwyn Davies brings together vibrant textile pieces and large-scale photographic works celebrating the ephemera, icons and visual culture of the area affectionately known as the nation's glittering "Sunrise Strip."
Gallery Director Ingrid Hedgcock said that she is thrilled the Gallery is presenting a body of work that is both geographically relevant and nationally important.
"This is a significant opportunity for the Gallery to present new work by contemporary artist Gerwyn Davies, particularly a powerful suite of works that responds not only to celebrated icons from the region, but also to elements intrinsically connected to our local history," she said.
Davies developed much of the work during a 2025 residency at the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio at the Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre. Across the three-week residency, the artist tested ideas and experimented with new processes, resulting in works now shown publicly for the first time in Sunburn.
Davies transforms everyday items like postcards, souvenirs and signage into theatrical forms of sequins, spandex and sculptural costume. These elements appear in staged photographic scenes populated by a costumed figure who simultaneously emerges and dissolves within layered, immersive environments. Together, these works evoke the distinctive visual landscape of coastal Australiana.
"Davies's interweaving of photography and textile practices results in wonderfully lavish mise-en-scènes. With Davies as protagonist, the artist ingeniously creates fantastical settings that blur boundaries between the real and the fabricated," Ms Hedgcock said.
Davies performs each role within the work, wearing every costume. Through sculptural garments constructed from everyday materials, his body becomes a site for transformation — hosting a cast of characters shaped by personal connection, historical reference and playful reinvention.
Gerwyn Davies b.1985, Meter Maid 2026, archival pigment print,Courtesy the artist, Jan Murphy Gallery (Brisbane) and Michael Reid Gallery (Sydney/Berlin). © The artist
In the new photographic work Meter Maid 2026, Davies continues his exploration of self-representation, camp spectacle and the dynamics of queer in/visibility. Combining costume, performance and carefully staged imagery, he reimagines a well-known Gold Coast icon, casting himself as a new member of the Surfers Paradise meter maid tradition.
The exhibition also includes Tan man 2025, a new textile work created from costume remnants. Drawing on archival imagery from the Tweed Regional Museum collection, the piece revisits a 1950s billboard advertising Paterson's Vita-Tan. It references the eccentric promotional practice of John Paterson, who famously toured the Gold Coast in a custom Rolls-Royce, spraying beachgoers with a tanning solution made from mutton bird oil.
Sunburn: Gerwyn Davies is, at its core, a love letter to Tweed and the borderlands—embracing the lurid, the leisurely and the lowbrow as sites of cultural richness and creative possibility.
Gerwyn Davies's work is held in both public and private collections. Since 2011, he has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in Australia and internationally, and has been a finalist in numerous art prizes, including the National Photographic Portrait Prize (2023 and 2025). In 2023, Davies won the Tweed Regional Gallery's Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture with Replica 2023 (Tweed Regional Gallery collection), following the Director's Choice Award in 2021 for Float 2021 (Tweed Regional Gallery collection).
Sunburn: Gerwyn Davies will be on display at the Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre from 3 July to 22 November 2026.
This exhibition is a Tweed Regional Gallery initiative. The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is generously supported by benefactor Mr Tim Fairfax AC via the Tweed Regional Gallery Foundation Ltd.
Gerwyn Davies is represented by Jan Murphy Gallery (Brisbane) and Michael Reid Galleries (Sydney/Berlin).
