Hobart-based artist Effie Pryer works primarily as a portrait and figurative painter in oils, her professional experience as a paintings conservator informing her traditional technique; the artist also using the unique qualities of Tasmanian timber panels, both as support and as an integral part of the finished work.
Inspired by icon paintings, which contrast sumptuous materials with unimaginable suffering, Pryer’s small paintings stage trivial woes with the tragedy of undeserved martyrdom; as, in Closet Dramas, well-known classical narratives are dislocated – to be reproduced in awkward, contemporary contexts.
Bett Gallery
21 November to 13 December 2025
Tasmania
Effie Pryer, Saturday morning, 2025, oil on wood panel, Blackwood frame, 20 × 30cm (image) 25.5 × 22.5cm (framed)
Courtesy the artist and Bett Gallery, Tasmania
