Hannah Goggs

Hannah Goggs arrives at Michael Reid Southern Highlands with a vivid, idiosyncratic world already fully formed. Across this introductory collection, she conjures a kind of domestic folklore — tables laid with tulips and wattle, jam jars and mismatched crockery, birds slipping in and out of the frame as though they’ve wandered in from the garden

In the more intimate still lifes, Goggs sets her scenes on softly textured tabletops — a striped vase brimming with wattle and red tulips; a blackbird nosing at scattered berries; mushrooms, teacups and small celebratory bunting that gives everything the air of a summer festivity.

The larger works expand that mood into something communal and theatrical. Kookaburras chatter in the banksias; rosellas and black cockatoos perch among rose bushes and wattle sprays. Bunting runs across the sky like a hand-drawn horizon line, stringing together jars of jam, lollipops and jars labelled “Mustard,” tokens that read less as objects and more as invitations into a story. Goggs builds these scenes with thick, tactile paint, her colours warm and lived-in: terracotta hills, powdery blues, coral-pinks and the unmistakable yellow of wattle in full flower.