MELBOURNE MORNING | EXISTENTIAL OBSERVATIONS

From separate houses, apartments and rooms, they emerge carrying the same code: coffee in hand, eyes barely online, bodies already moving before the rest of the system has fully agreed to participate.

MELBOURNE MORNING observes a familiar daily transformation. In a city of chilly mornings and warm beds that are increasingly difficult to leave, coffee becomes less a drink than a mechanism. It runs through Melbourne like a second bloodstream, switching people into working condition and sending them towards offices, classrooms, studios and whatever else has managed to justify getting up.

The figures appear from and disappear into the painted surface, individual yet strangely synchronized. Different faces, different lives, the same cup, the same morning ritual. Somewhere between sleep and obligation, Melbourne starts moving.

Part of EXISTENTIAL OBSERVATIONS, an ongoing series examining the ordinary rituals, behaviours and absurdities through which contemporary life reveals itself.

Acrylic on stretched canvas
61 × 50.8 cm (24 × 20 in)
2026
Original artwork

Signed by the artist