What's the future of art in 2019. Ray Monde takes a look at the year ahead and plans to get stuffed

I've got my first solo show in a commercial gallery coming up in May - at Michael Reid Murrurundi. It's an extraordinary opportunity to showcase my work to an unseen audience. I have an extraordinary sense of obligation to 'do a good job'. To create works that will not only resonate with the audience but will also reward the gallery with sales. I am coming to realise I need to dismiss the thoughts running through my head 'Who would buy this?' and instead focus on producing th

In just an hour I set up my works for my new show, It’s for your own good. These works explore experiences from my childhood that inform who I am now. It’s extraordinarily handy having all the works the same size and so expertly framed, because it was a simple case of banging in a nail in the wall and hanging the works. You can see how fast it was here: https://youtu.be/yMVVlC2XSqk The show opens on Thursday. I’ll let you know how it goes. #art #painting #contemporaryart #Pap

Wait till your father gets home, collage and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Monde Monde Artist, 2016 “Wait till your father gets home!” is one of the most terrifying sounds any child can hear and it evokes strong memories of our childhood. Powerful memories can be triggered by the simplest things – prickles in the lawn, the smell of dagwood dogs at the show, floaties at the swimming pool. In my new exhibition coming up at M16 Artspace, I question whether our memories are

Wait till your father gets home, collage and synthetic polymer paint, by Monde Monde I’m frantically working on my final works for my next exhibition at the M16 Art Space in Canberra. The works follow a similar theme to my last show – exploring our childhood experiences and how they shape us as adults. I’m obsessed about how as adults we relate to our child-self. As children we see every day things in extraordinary, disproportionate ways. This same distortion can be seen in h

It’s a big call I know but it’s true, Dark Heart at the Art Gallery of South Australia is magnificent. Sensation at the Royal Academy in London may have had shock and gore, but Dark Heart is all awe. It’s exceptionally well-curated, in way that Nick Mitzevich only knows how. Alex Seton’s Some died trying to have a life like mine is paired beautifully but not overshadowed by Ben Quilty’s The Island, which only took 6 (exhausting) days to create. Macabre rooms by Julia De Ville

At home, I don’t mind being disorganised or messy, as you would have seen from my kitchen photos earlier on. But when I’m in the public eye, I like to look like I know what I am doing, even if that’s not the case. That’s why last night I sat down with the gallery plans for Gaffa Gallery and painstakingly make a scale replica of the walls so I could see the space around my work and where to hang things. It’s a fine balance curating this stuff, but this system made me feel very

Black Spot on Bombay Road There’s only one week to go before the opening of Dark Side of the Road at Gaffa Gallery. If you can make it on March 7, please come along for a drink and chat between 6pm-8pm. It’ll be lovely to see you. For those of you who can’t make it, here’s a selection of the 10 works that will be in the exhibition and what it’s all about. Dark side of the Road explores rural landscapes that have been impacted by the hand of man. Mountains are garlanded with c

Keep calm. I have a solo exhibition which opens on March 7 at Gaffa gallery in Sydney. It would all be very exciting except at the moment I only have one completed piece of the 10 work show. I’m not panicking yet, but I feel my stomach churning and despite the looming deadline (I need to supply images by January 22) I am procrastinating. It’s always the same with me. I like to think I’m organised. I create small thumbnail scamps of potential ideas for artworks and they remain

A lot of people were asking me to see my Summer in Berlin series in person, so I have finally curated an exhibition at the Arthouse Hotel in Pitt Street, Sydney. It’s on till October 15, so if you’re passing by, please pop in to the Ground Floor gallery and take a peek. If you don’t live in Sydney, you can see the original series at saatchionline.com Many of these are now in private collections in Sydney, New York & London which I am very pleased about. It’s often the case th

Thanks to a generous government grant, the local arts group has been able to purchase its very own space for exhibitions, workshops and meetings. Originally two school houses put together and then used for years as a saddlery, the buildings needed a lot of cleaning, painting and rebuilding. After months of hard slog, it finally opened and crowds poured through. It’s exciting for a small town of 1500 people to have its own art space. It’s going to be very interesting to see wh