Luke Thurgate is an artist living and working on Gadigal Land (Sydney, Australia). He teaches drawing and painting at the National Art School, where he graduated in 2021 with a Master of Fine Art. Luke has an extensive exhibition history including exhibitions at Grafton Regional Gallery, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Backwoods Gallery, Burra Regional Art Gallery, National Art School, and Adelaide Central Gallery. He was a finalist in the 2019 Dobell Drawing Prize, the 2020 Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Prize, and the 2022 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award.
Luke’s multi-disciplinary studio practice explores the construction and deconstruction of identity in relation to masculinity, sexuality, romance, and power. His current work uses the monster as a surrogate other to explore tensions between parody, sincerity, menace, pathos, transgression, and vulnerability. Luke’s work borrows from a range of sources, including popular culture, Catholic iconography, and queer historical archives.