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2026 Adult Categories
Brenton Drechsler
Saint Charles, 2025
Oil on Board
In preparation for an upcoming residency in Europe, I have begun considering previously captured source photographs, taken by me on recent travels abroad and the symbolic anchors of vehicles - not just as transport but of identity, expectation and generational performance. Saint Charles, 2025 is derived by one such photograph. The station wagon, once a cultural icon of suburban reliability, becomes a stand-in for the architecture of fatherhood: utilitarian, enclosed and coded with responsibility and failed expectations. I'm interested in how objects like cars carry not only bodies, but histories and roles. For queer people, especially those growing up in heteronormative settings, the station wagon may symbolize an external ideal of "normalcy"-one that excluded or silenced queerness. In this way, it becomes a site of both nostalgia and dissonance. My practice engages with queer phenomenology by tracing how bodies orient themselves toward and around everyday objects saturated with normative scripts.
Size: 76 × 102 cm
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About Brenton Drechsler
Brenton Drechsler is an Australian emerging visual artist from Adelaide/Kaurna Country. Drechsler attained his Bachelor of Visual Art at Adelaide Central School of Art in 2022, winning the Hill Smith Art Advisory award for Painting and Drawing. Drechsler went on to complete an Honour’s year of study in 2023, at Adelaide Central School of Art, achieving a First-Class result. Since then, Drechsler has been a finalist in The National Emerging Art Prize twice, The Lester Portrait Prize, The John Glover Art Prize and most recently The Lethbridge Landscape Prize. His works are now held in collections both nationally and internationally.
