The unfiltered realities of growing up in public housing at Woodridge are laid bare in Logan artist Jake Moss’s debut solo exhibition in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.
Opening on Tuesday, 10 March at Mitchell Fine Art, Hollywoodridge presents Moss’s childhood like a film production timeline, unfolding through painting, sculpture, installation, video and sound.
Born in 1994, Mr Moss draws on his upbringing in a low socio-economic, multicultural pocket of Logan.
Mr Moss said the “exhibition unfolds as an autobiographical narrative of his childhood experience deeply influenced by scarcity, homelessness and fracture.”
At first glance, the works appear playful and brightly coloured. But, on closer look, they reveal layered reflections on home, belonging, identity and youth, Mr Moss said.
“Hollywoodridge resists expectation and stereotype,” Mr Moss said.
“It is not about where I come from as an idea, but about treating that life with the seriousness, scale and care usually reserved for cinema.”
The exhibition borrows from the mythology of Hollywood, a place Mr Moss said felt distant during his childhood, yet symbolised escape and possibility.
By collapsing the space between glamour and public housing, he reframes his origin story as something expansive rather than limiting.
Gallery director Mike Mitchell said the show positioned Mr Moss’s autobiography as a deliberate creative act.
“Hollywoodridge positions autobiography not as a confession, but as a production,” Mr Mitchell said.
“It is a carefully constructed, defiantly ambitious work that reframes origin stories as sites of creative power rather than limitation.”
Admission to the exhibition, which will run until Saturday, 11 April at the Mitchell Fine Art Gallery, 86 Arthur Street, Fortitude Valley, is free.
An opening night event will be held on from 6pm to 8pm on Friday, 13 March. Mr Moss will deliver a talk about his work at the gallery from 11am on Saturday, 21 March.
All exhibition events, including the opening night and artist talk, are free and open to the public; no reservation is required.
