Since her first solo exhibition in New York in 1977, English-born Sydney-based Hilarie Mais has staged more than 35 solo presentations in Australian commercial galleries and institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney which showed her 2017 survey exhibition curated by Blair French and Manya Sellers. Curated into important exhibitions such as Know My Name at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra in 2021, Mais has undoubtedly established a reputation as one of Australia’s most respected and leading minimal Abstractionists.

Although Mais is best known as a sculptor, her work consistently questions the categories and slippages demarcating sculpture and painting through its rigorous formal interrogation of the modernist grid. With each new work, Mais brings something new and unexpectedly expressive and emotional to the otherwise rigid structural geometry and patterning of this well-rehearsed facet of abstraction.

Given Mais has been collected by more than 50 public and corporate collections throughout her stellar career, one may be delighted to learn that modestly scaled works can be acquired for less than $5K. Conor O’Shea, director of s-y-d-n-e-y-s-y-d-n-e-y, a small gallery in Potts Point, took a number of these works to June Art Fair in Art Basel 2022, after her 2021 solo show, You Are Not Supposed to Know You’re in It.

Three such works, each called Sampler, 2004, reference a specific gendered craft tradition of needlework that was used to demonstrate women’s embroidery skills as an index of achievement. “In these small works I am playing with the concept of making examples of certain motifs that were occurring in my work at the time and are actually still present,” she explains. “My large works refer to my bodily scale and physical presence, hence I occasionally work small to refresh my approach to scale. I also like the intimacy; they are almost like a small icon or portrait of a loved one that you hold.”