b. 1982 in Melbourne, Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Emily Ferretti is a painter based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her figurative and abstract images derive equally from collected images, memory and imagination. As a result, her images mirror their conception, hovering between representation and abstraction. Recurring motifs in her work include landscape and still-life scenes and while they are always devoid of people, their presence is palpable. Attuned to contemporary practice, Ferretti’s paintings engage with a history of picture-making across genres and traditions.
Ferretti’s paintings hover between sensation and memory, where colour becomes a language of emotion. In this liminal space, time slows, the paintings hold not just weather, but feeling, a quiet reckoning with the forces that shape us. There is a rhythm to her marks, a push and pull between movement and stillness, presence and absence. Like a distant storm rolling in, her works suggest a world on the cusp of change, where beauty and uncertainty intertwine.
Dedicated to a full-time studio practice over the past 20 years, she has exhibited widely and undertaken studio residences including Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; Cité de Arts International, Paris; and Green Street Studio, New York. Ferretti has had over 20 solo exhibitions in commercial and artist run spaces in Australia and internationally. She has also been in significant group shows and prizes, including the Geelong Art Prize, the John Leslie Art Prize, Len Fox Painting Prize as well as the Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Collections: Acacia Collection; Artbank; Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery; Epworth Hospital Collection; Joyce Nissan Collection; The Macquarie Group Collection; Monash University Museum of Art Collection; Victoria University Art Collection, Charles Sturt University Art Collection; Private collections in Australia and internationally.
