In Nell’s exhibition Face Everything, simple, emoji-style faces adorn household objects, clay sculptures and blown glass. Sometimes their mouths are open in an ‘oh’ of surprise, and sometimes a half-moon smile.
Now open at Heide Modern in Melbourne, Face Everything is a survey of Nell’s 30-year career. The title – much like the seemingly simple faces so prevalent in her art – belies a deeper meaning.
The faces are instantly understood, Nell says, beyond language or experience, and act as an outstretched hand to connect with the viewer. ‘I’m really passionate about communicating,’ she says, ‘and I do it through visual art. That’s my thing.’
The title of the exhibition has a double meaning. It refers to the faces she uses in her art, she says, but also the ambition ‘to face everything in life: the difficulties and the joys, and everything in between’.
Entering the exhibition, Nell points to a work on canvas that features one of her ghost faces with a translation of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra. ‘It’s about the fleetingness of all things,’ she explains. ‘Life’s precious, so you might as well smile in the face of it.’
Nell’s survey exhibition – quick links
Taking over Heide Modern
The works in the exhibition range across glass, sculpture, mosaic, tapestry and bronze, as well as many found and personal objects. They have been chosen with Heide Modern in mind, to work with and respond to the limestone-and-glass modernist building, the former home of art patrons John and Sunday Reed.
Some sculptural works repurpose domestic objects, like ironing boards, a wok and gardening tools. Others reference the surrounding environment at Heide, particularly through motifs of apples, snakes and branches, or with materials that are resilient to the conditions in the light-abundant space.
Wandering through Face Everything, it feels like the house itself has been taken over by a horde of happy and surprised characters. There is something very joyous about being able to discover each one – many of which are positioned in amusing locations.
In one work, a trio of ironing boards traverse the loungeroom, forming what Nell calls a sculptural gag. ‘You’ve got an upright ironing board, one upside down and one vertical,’ Nell explains. ‘It’s like all the planes of an object, as a plinth.’
Between the legs, precariously balanced on a narrow crossbar, is a glass piece the size of an emu egg sporting a surprised face.
In everyday happiness (brown) (2025), a tiny bronze poo smiles at you from the shelf below an ensuite mirror. In sitting and walking (2025), a tiny, thumb-sized bronze-coloured egg sits atop a walking stick in the corner of the study. Its mouth is agape – perhaps because its owner just walked off without it?
There are no wall texts in the exhibition – a deliberate choice. ‘I feel like it’s more generous in this show to allow the viewer to have their own experience because the work is so readably accessible,’ says Nell. ‘The conceptual rigor comes later.’
Faces, faces everywhere
Faces have long been a part of Nell’s visual language. They appeared as a deliberate choice to more readily communicate through her art.
Explaining the move towards simplicity, she points to the earlier works Guardians of the Eastern Dark (2005) and Dark Friends of the Southern Assembly (2005).
‘These two works, I made 20 years ago and they are the first paintings that I ever made with ghosts in them, which have become an ongoing – and very fertile – symbol for my practice,’ she says.
‘These paintings were very personal, highly symbolic, and … no one ever really connected with them. I realised maybe they were a bit too cryptic or introspective.’ It was a catalyst, helping her realise she was passionate about communicating.
Read: Nell’s 30-year survey exhibition is site-responsive and over the top
‘I started using simple faces because you cannot unread a smile. You know what a tear coming out of an eye means,’ she says. Simplicity gave her a way ‘to elicit an immediate response in both myself and the viewer. From there, there’s other things I can talk about. Life and death. Deeper philosophical questions.’
Nell sees it as a form of bait and switch, similar to the way American artist Mike Kelley used soft toys and childhood nostalgia as a way to explore themes of humanity in his art. For Nell, though, there’s no intent to lure or trick, just to connect, openly and wholeheartedly.
I can’t help but ask if she thinks the faces have personalities. ‘Oh, yeah,’ she says, animated. ‘They get nicknames. Sometimes these might be a boy or not a girl or non-binary.
‘I keep seeing the cement mixer [Meeting the Day (outside) (2025)] and I go, hello handsome!’
Spirituality, fragility and the refuge of nests
Nell’s spiritual influences infuse Face Everything. In a former bedroom, the blinds are down, diffusing the midday light. A life-sized bronze figure of a woman sits cross-legged in Buddha’s meditation pose, her fingers touching. Branches sprout from her shoulders, holding orange glass ghosts.
The woman’s face is calm, and the patina on the bronze speaks of aeons passed and storms weathered. But the arrangement of this work, Self-nature is subtle and mysterious – Tree Woman / Woman Tree (2023), also suggests that without protection, the fragile glass ghosts would smash in an instant on the hard tiled floor below.
‘A lot of the newer works, without any plan to do so, are quite vulnerable,’ Nell says. ‘Precarious. Top heavy. And I think that’s because of the vulnerability of the times we live in.’
Among these fragile and precarious sculptures, however, Nell has also placed nests, places of warmth and refuge – ‘homes within homes’, as she puts it – and filled them with more ceramic and glass eggs.
Connections and opposites
Inside the exhibition, Nell is a whirlwind, rapidly drawing connections between works and themes. Face Everything documents her love for music, especially AC/DC, but there are many other personal connections and objects that hold histories and memories for her.
The exhibition includes her great-grandmother’s bowl, tiles dug up by builders at her property in Maitland, and a kettle stand made by her grandfather.
Nell’s earliest work is easy to miss, placed high up on a wall in the corridor outside the powder room. Farmyard Friend (1995) is a picture of a bunny she made in school using her dad’s handkerchief.
‘One really cool thing about having a survey show,’ she says, ‘is that there’s links that you see in your practice that you didn’t see before.’
She points again and again to examples of opposites: light and dark, boys and girls, life and death. I ask why these dualities are interesting to her.
‘Because the conventions of language can’t …’ – she stops, trying to find the words – ‘Like when does night become day? Is there a moment? Because language lets us down. Obviously we need language but there’s more to see.’
Nell’s no-bullshit approach to art
The heart of Face Everything is a spirit of generosity and openness. ‘If I can cut through my own bullshit, there’s a chance that someone looking at the work might too,’ she says matter-of-factly.
‘It’s about offering something. Not obscuring meaning or making it so dense that it’s impenetrable.’
She points to two silver sculptures next to each other in Apples and Orange (silver) (2023). ‘You look at this, it’s apples and oranges,’ she says. ‘Everyone knows what it is, but then you can think about that phrase, apples and oranges.’
She continues, ‘Why do we compare things? What is better than something else? That impossibility, that preposterousness of comparison. That in facing everything, everything has value.’
‘A moment of reprieve in a challenging world’
In Face Everything with Nell, the interplay of art, architecture and the natural bush surroundings outside generate a sense of calm. The lack of didactics also takes the pressure off. Without labels to read, I’m struck by how enjoyable it is to just wander and discover.
The generous light spilling through the large lounge windows brings natural luminescence to the works, while the exposed white limestone walls and natural materiality of the works themselves give a sense of being grounded.
‘I pulled out a lot of work with colour and joy,’ says Nell about choosing work for the exhibition. ‘I hope that the colours and the materials, that they give a moment of reprieve in a challenging world – something pleasing or aesthetically compelling.’
She pauses and thinks. I wait, in comfortable silence, while she tries to put words to her intent for this exhibition.
‘And actually, not challenging, but still rich and fertile. There we go,’ she says with a smile. ‘I got it out.’
