Review by Sayge Potter in response to Jemima Wyman’s Deep Surface exhibition at the QLD Art Museum
Go check it out for yourself @ Jemima Wyman: Deep Surface | QUT Art Museum
Everywhere you look, there is a story being told. The bold and expressive nature of the works immediately draws you in. Before you, a time capsule of Jemima Wyman’s practice over the last thirty years explodes with ideas and inspiration. Wyman’s Deep Surface exhibition allows the audience to follow her as she explores the use of pattern, symmetry, and expressive colours to convey themes of camouflage, collective organising, and democracy (QUT Art Museum, 2026). Jemima Wyman’s exploration into camouflage undeniably relates to people from all walks of life. The themes she explores can be applied to everyone, whether it is through social expectations, prejudice, or even personal perception.
Jemima Wyman is a Palawa woman who was born in Sydney and raised in North Queensland. She graduated from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 1997 and completed her master’s degree at the California Institute of Arts (Kholeif, 2023). The use of bright colours, patterns, and protest imagery in Wyman’s work recreates both aposematism and crypsis, ways animals protect themselves in nature. Through this, Wyman communicates how humans frequently mask themselves as a similar form of protection. The themes illustrated fit perfectly into the contemporary art sphere, highlighting how people produce a fake persona to hide fear, discomfort, or unconventional aspects of themselves (Siegel, 2014). Through her exhibition, Wyman has broken down the ideas of assimilation, encouraging her audience to reflect inward.
When experiencing the exhibition first-hand, there are clear elements being discussed across each artwork. Two works stood out within my experience at the exhibition that could be easily missed.
At only 60cm in diameter, the 1996 reproduced 2025 work titled ‘Kaleidoscopic Catchment Materialised 1 of 3’ is presented at head height sitting flush to the wall. The artist has layered diamond pieces of mirrored acrylic into a kaleidoscope shape that distorts one’s reflection. This work stands out as it unwillingly camouflages the viewer into an unrecognizable version of themselves. This is relevant in current politics as governments continue to control people through new laws, distorting one’s own bodily autonomy. For example, how in 2022, the US government allowed states to ban abortion (4 Centre for Reproductive Rights, 2026), or the ‘Adult Crime, Adult Time’ act in Australia that has direct effects on the Indigenous children, who are already targeted within the judicial system (Australia Amnesty International, 2025). Most recently, the isolation of transgender people in America (Murib, 2026) and the bill passed in Queensland forbidding specific pro-Palestine phrases (Twyford, 2026). These issues are relevant to the work as the work takes away the audience’s choice to be masked. Looking into the mirror, you have no autonomy over your distortion of self. This highlights how people are expected to accept the rules and laws society creates, no matter the effect.
‘Vulva Girl’, created in 2003, is a 15:38 video that shows Jemima Wyman in a white Lycra body suit decorated with eyelashes and red fabric that spills out of her mouth, breasts, and crotch. Within the video she gets dressed and undressed for the camera, performing as she interacts with the environment. The room is covered in pink furniture, depicted within a radiating pink vulva border (Dionysius et.al, 2026). This work is confronting to the audience. A viewer may become uncomfortable with the content, causing a reaction that perfectly encapsulates its taboo nature. This attitude is ingrained in us from childhood, creating an imbalance of power and representation (Gerner, 2024). As we mature, male genitalia and orgasms are common topics, but the vagina and female pleasure are still seen as something shameful (Enright, 2020). Jemima Wyman challenges the way we perceive vaginas and the female body, and tackles how women use their clothes, makeup, and body language in everyday life to put up a façade. Relating back to the exhibition’s themes, women are expected to camouflage to avoid harassment. However, Wyman puts forth the idea that women should have every right to stand out and enjoy the pleasure of performance when it’s on one’s own terms.
Throughout this exhibition, each work tells a different story of human experiences. No matter the path you take when exploring the gallery, there are connections between every artwork. As a viewer, I was fully immersed in the experience, consumed by the surrounding artworks and captivated by Wyman’s vision.
The Deep Surface exhibition ultimately communicates Jemima Wyman’s perception of human beings and the way we navigate the world. This exhibition has immense cultural significance; the stories told by the artist shed perspective and present vital commentary on our world. I strongly recommend visiting this exhibition at the QUT Art Museum, taking your time as you make your way through the space and create your own opinions of this work. This must-see exhibition is a beautiful and well-put-together take on current times that encourages us to stand up for ourselves, push past the masks we create, and fight for what we believe in.
Artist Bio:
Jemima Wyman is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Wyman’s art practice incorporates various mediums including installation, video, performance, photography and painting. Her most recent artworks utilize these mediums to specifically focus on visually based resistance strategies employed within protest culture and zones of conflict. These works aim to explore the formal and psychological potentiality of camouflage and masking in reference to collective identity.
Wyman is represented by Commonwealth & Council, Milani Gallery and Sullivan + Strumpf. Her most recent solo exhibition A Haze Descends was held at Commonwealth & Council in 2022. Recent group exhibition have been held at ZKM (Germany), MU artspace (Netherlands), Nam June Paik Art Center (Korea), Elaine L. Jacob Gallery Wayne State University (Detroit), Carriageworks (Sydney), Steve Turner Contemporary (Los Angeles), 17th Biennale of Sydney | THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age (Sydney), MUMA(Melbourne), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) and 21st Century Museum of Art (Japan). Selected large-scale commissions include work for Air at GOMA Other Life-formings at Blackwood Gallery (Canada), Iconography of Revolt at City Gallery Wellington (New Zealand), The Unexpected Guest: Liverpool Biennial at FACT (Liverpool) , and Pattern Bandits at the Children’s Art Center at GOMA (Brisbane) with an accompanying book Pattern Power.
Wyman completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts (in Visual Arts) with Honors at the Queensland University of Technology. In 2007, she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from The California Institute of Arts; this study was made possible with the generous support of an Anne and Gordon Samstag Scholarship.
In 2005 CamLab was formed, a collaboration between Wyman and Anna Mayer.The duo’s sculptural, video-based, and social practice work has been exhibited internationally, as well as extensively in their hometown of Los Angeles at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Hammer Museum, The Armory Center for the Arts, and Occidental College’s Weingart Galleries. CamLab has co-taught classes of its own design at California State University, Los Angeles, Art Center College of Design, Ox-Bow School of Art, Occidental College and (held public workshops) at the University of Houston.
Reference list
Centre for Reproductive Rights (2026). After Roe Fell: U.S. Abortion Laws by State. Centre for Reproductive Rights. https://reproductiverights.org/maps/abortion-laws-by-state/
Australia Amnesty International (2025). Queensland government’s “Adult Crime, Adult Time” laws a violation of children’s rights. Australia Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org.au/queensland-governments-adult-crime-adult-time- lawsviolation-of-childrens-rights/
Dionysius, K., Etgar, Y., Gibson, S., Larsson, C., Shell, H. R., Ooyen, V, V., & Wyman, J. (2026). Jemima Wyman: Deep Surface (1st). QUT Galleries and Museums.
Enright, L. (2020). Vagina: A Re-Education (Paperback edition.). Allen & Unwin.
Gerner, M. (2024). The Vagina Business: The Innovative Breakthroughs That Could Change Everything in Women’s Health. Icon Books, Limited.
Kholeif, O. (2023). World Cloud. Jemima Wyman. https://www.jemimawyman.com/work/clay-ceramics-rl94h-2shtz
Murib, Z. (2026). Pseudoscience and attacks on transgender people. European Journal of Politics and Gender, 9(1), 165-169. Retrieved Mar 20, 2026, from https://doi.org/10.1332/25151088Y2025D000000095
QUT Art Museum. (2026). Jemima Wyman: Deep Surface. Qut Art Museum. https://www.artmuseum.qut.edu.au/whats-on/2026/exhibitions/jemima-wyman-deep-surface
Siegel, T. A. (2014). Containing the Facade. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
Twyford, L (2026). Pro-Palestinian group accuses Queensland police of ‘overreach’ after ‘From the river to the sea’ arrests. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-12/qld-speech-laws-protest-students-for-palestine-responds-police/106445318