Justin Williams

Entering Justin Williams’ painting is like nostalgically stepping into an ancestral world, suspended between myth and memory. His matt surfaces, sanded down to the grain, appear to have the same texture as an ancient wall; His palette of browns, ochres, greens and purples is illuminated by blues and yellows. Beyond their apparent naivety, his canvases reveal great sophistication, blending Outsider Art and Symbolism punctuated with decorative flourishes. Heir to his grandparents’ migration from Egypt to Australia, Justin Williams paintings explore deracination and family as well as the mysterious realms of forests and mountains. From his studio on the Sunshine Coast near Brisbane, he celebrates the rustic beauty of the world, more inspired by the fragility of life and the warmth of human connections than by any quest for the perfect line. 

Born in 1984 in Melbourne, Australia, Justin Williams’ work has been the subject of numerous solo gallery exhibitions including COMA (Sydney), Forma and L’Inlassable (Paris), Roberts Projects (Los Angeles), the Vigo Gallery (London) and the Silas von Morisse Gallery (New York). In 2024, he participated in the collective exhibition New South: Recent Painting from Southern Australia at the Hazlehurst Art Center in Sydney. His works feature in major collections across the world, both public, such as the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, and private, including the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection (The Bunker, USA), the Arndt Collection (Australia), the Buxton International Collection (Australia), the Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art (China) and the agnès b. Collection (Paris). His work has been widely acclaimed by the press and has appeared in numerous publications such as Juxtapoz, It’s Nice That, Art Now LA, Esquire, etc.