Dani McKenzie

Stemming from an interest in the everyday rituals and strange intimacy of city life, Dani McKenzie’s paintings

create an impression of second-hand people watching. Based on her own street photographs — which are

often taken at night — her work offers a romanticised, sometimes nosy, exploration of place and the

strangers inhabiting it. Peering in through the lit-up windows of restaurants, bars, apartments and

shopfronts, we catch glimpses of the lives unfolding inside — private moments happening in public spaces.

From a distance, the paintings appear almost photographic. Up close, McKenzie’s fast and loose brushwork

is more perceptive than precise — details are lost, edges dissolve, and the eye is left to fill in the gaps.

Playing deliberately with scale, the smaller paintings invite you to lean in close, while others loom large

enough to swallow you whole.

In the end, the viewer becomes both onlooker and unwitting accomplice. It’s a slightly nefarious kind of

observation. But then again — who doesn’t like to people watch?

Dani McKenzie was born in 1990 in Sydney, Australia. Since graduating from the National Art School in

2016, she has held solo exhibitions in Paris, France (2024), Los Angeles, USA (2023), and has exhibited

extensively in Sydney and Melbourne. In 2018, she relocated from Gadigal/Sydney to Naarm/Melbourne,

where she currently lives and works.

Her work is held in several private and public collections, including the Macquarie Group Collection, City of

Port Phillip Collection, Bayside Art and Heritage Collection, and the National Art School Collection. She has

received a number of awards, including the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (2019), the Belle ArtStart Prize

(2015), and was a recipient of the Onslow Storrier Residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2017).