Abdul Abdullah

Seventh time's the charm, right? The Art Of... - Stream now on ABC iview or Tuesdays 9.20pm on ABC TV.

Brushstrokes that tell a story ✨   Portrait Artist of the Year  – Stream from Sunday 2 November 8pm on ABC iview and ABC TV.   #PortraitArtistOfTheYearAU #ComingSoon #Art #Painting

The host combo you didn’t know you needed 🙌   Miranda Tapsell and Luke McGregor are set to host Portrait Artist of the Year, where for the first time, both amateur and professional artists will go head-to-head, competing for the ultimate prize: a life-changing commission to hang in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.   Their work will be judged by a panel of esteemed Australian art experts: -Bree Pickering, Director of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia -Abdul Abdullah, award-winning multi-disciplinary artist -Robert Wellington, Associate Professor of Art History at the Australian National University Portrait Artist of the Year — Coming later this year to ABC iview and ABC TV.   #PortraitArtistOfTheYearAU #ComingSoon #MirandaTapsell #LukeMcGregor

BAD//DREEMS finally getting their flowers after the independent release of their masterpiece fifth album ‘Ultra Dundee’. The full Betoota Talks interview with these Adelaide pub rock icons is available now wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.

Détails et immensité Created by @fintan_magee & @abdul_abdullah Curated by @amzianeabid For : Festival: @streetartboulognesurmer 📍 @ville.boulognesurmer #boulognesurmer #magee #abdullah #streetartboulognesurmer #streetartphotography

Very happy to be included as a finalist in the 2026 Sulman Prize at @artgalleryofnsw with our collaborative mural ‘Revisionist Statue’ (2026). Thank you to everybody involved! The work itself can be seen on Hackett St, Ultimo. This collaborative mural draws on the history of the defacement of statues and monuments as a form of political protest. Fintan’s depiction of a bust of Julius Caesar sits behind bevelled window glass – an obfuscation that challenges popular perceptions of immutable histories. Layered on top of this image are Abdul’s white cartoon hands that appear to interact with the marble head, as if they belonged to the bust, and it was trying to self-consciously obscure its own likeness. The title, Revisionist statue, playfully imagines a historical symbol of ‘civilisation’ coming to terms with and interrogating its legacies. @fintan_magee and @abdul_abdullah , 2026 I don’t know if either of us are in the country for the party, but have fun in our stead!

The last painting in my Cronulla series depicts one of the first moments of violence at the 2005 riots. In this work a man is attacked with fists and bottles against the tray of a white Ute. While encouraged by radio personalities, and justified as retribution for unsocial behaviour attributed to a specific racialised group, the riots on the day amounted to the targeting of people of colour who were violently assaulted. With no other links to prior examples of misbehaviour, the victims on the day were targeted because of their assumed ethnic and religious identities. Akin to a 5000-strong attempted lynching. For REMEMORY I anonymised the victims and prioritised the perpetrators. For me the stories of those attacked on the day (while important) are not the problem. In memorialising the riots in these paintings I want the audience to remember the rage, and the banality of that rage. I want empathy for the victims, but change comes with an empathic analysis of the perpetrators, lest the story keeps getting repeated. It’s my intention that these work serve their audience as a tool for cultural/societal analysis at one remove from the actual events and as a gateway for conversation and reflection. A huge thanks to @hooralq for including me in her @biennalesydney and for being unwavering and strong throughout. Thank you @artgalleryofnsw for hosting the work and @twtproperty for the support. And thank you to the team at @amesyavuz for always backing me. And thank you so much to my incredible team AHAH Studio for working so hard! And thank you to @3d_eyes_cafe168 for shooting the models in the studio. It is also such a privilege to see and exhibit alongside some of the artists who have mentored me and who I look up to. The biennale runs until June 14 Image: ‘North Cronulla Carpark approx 1:45pm’ (2025) oil on linen. 200cm x 300cm

The next work in my Cronulla series showing @hooralq ‘s @biennalesydney at @artgalleryofnsw is ‘Mitchell Road approx 2:40pm’ (2025) oil on linen 200cm x 300cm. The painting depicts the restaging of an incident that occurred during the 2005 riots when two Bangladeshi students were set upon by rioters as they approached the beach. The biennale website says REMEMORY is: A means of revisiting, reconstructing, and reclaiming histories that have been erased or repressed, Rememory signifies the intersection of memory and history, where recollection becomes an act of reassembling fragments of the past—whether personal, familial, or collective. The 25th edition of the Biennale connects the delicate space between remembering and forgetting. By engaging with Rememory, artists will highlight marginalised narratives, share untold stories, and inspire audiences to rethink how memory shapes identity, belonging, and the creation and celebration of new communities and connections. For me the exhibition explores the historical effects and ongoing ramifications of colonization, and the politicization of identity for the benefit of the powerful. I have often spoken about the projection of criminality/monstrosity on benign bodies to justify the unjust seizure of land, bodies, labour and resources, and for me the resistance to this stratagem is at the heart of probably all the work I saw. REMEMORY is on show at White Bay Power house, Chau Chak Wing museum , Penrith Reginal Gallery, Campbelltown Arts Centre and you can see my work at @artgalleryofnsw The exhibition runs until June 14th

March has been a huge month with SOFT POWER opening at @amesyavuz and the filming of #portraitartistoftheyearau season 2, but most personally I was included in @hooralq ‘s curation of the 2026 @biennalesydney at @artgalleryofnsw REMEMORY. Over the next three days/posts I want to express my gratitude to @hooralq for including me along with such amazing artists from all over the world. It was such privilege to work with you and spend time meeting and hanging out with such a brilliant group of people. I have many new fun memories of long train rides, dinners, nights out and hotel foyers with some of the coolest artists I’ve ever met. One funny/sad moment was when a group of international artists were reading some of the insane articles that were being published about the show, and one asked what our left wing papers were saying. I had to break the news we didn’t have any haha. It’s truly an honour to be included amongst you all and to have my Cronulla series hung at @artgalleryofnsw These three works were painted 20 years after the 2005 Cronulla riots. Drawing from Neo-classical history painting, I restaged three pivotal events from the riots, with models in my studio. By including the contrivances of theatre (the back drop, a school chair etc), the audience is made aware of the artifice while also, hopefully, recalling the events they refer to. These are deeply personal works for me and those events have left lasting impacts on so many I know. It was really important for me to have these hung at the state gallery. They are a Sydney story and I wanted this retelling to be in the heart of Sydney. It was the first thing I asked for when discussions about being included in the show started. If you’re in Sydney or coming to Sydney, I hope you get to see the biennale and hopefully see my paintings. REMEMORY runs until June 14. Image: ‘Cronulla Railway Station approx 3:00pm’ (2025) oil on linen. 200cm x 300cm

Thank you so much to everyone who watched season 1 of #portraitartistoftheyearau ! We’re well underway for season 2 and I can promise the artists and sitters are incredible! I can’t say anything else yet but stay tuned! You can still catch season 1 on @abciview and we’ll be back on your screens later in the year 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

This is the last week to see my show SOFT POWER at @amesyavuz Sydney. The exhibition runs until Saturday the 28th of March. I wanted to give a huge thanks to my friend @lechblaine for writing the accompanying catalogue essay. Please swipe through the slides to give it a read. I'll be in and out of the gallery over the next few days and hope to see you there.

Abdul Abdullah Born 1986, Boorloo/Perth, Australia Lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand [left image]: North Cronulla Beach car park approx 1:45pm (2025)oil on linen [centre image] Mitchell Road approx 2:40pm (2025) oil on linen [right image] Cronulla Railway Station approx 3:00pm (2025) oil on linen Commissioned by the @biennalesydney with generous support from @twtproperty Courtesy of the artist and @amesyavuz Abdul Abdullah confronts Australia’s collective memory of the 2005 Cronulla riots after two decades. Roughly 5000 Australians – predominantly white – assembled at Cronulla in Sydney’s south to begin a day-long assault on anyone of Middle Eastern or non-white appearance. Using the theatrical contrivance of 15th-century Renaissance painting to depict actual documented scenes, these new works both memorialise and reanimate the violence which was fuelled by some conservative media outlets at the time. Painted from photographs of posed re-enactments – the artifice of which is not erased from the final image – Abdullah exposes the ease with which memory can be manipulated or exploited. In revealing this facade, he suggests that the coordinated attacks were more closely related to a vigilante mob riot than a legitimate protest grounded in genuine concerns for national identity. On show now at @artgalleryofnsw