Work In Progress
ROBERT TORII
24 October – 15 November, 2026

Robert Torii was the overall winner of The Mornington Peninsula Contemporary Art Prize 2025 (MPCAP) and we are thrilled to showcase this emerging artist’s work.

Work in Progress is a collection of paintings exploring landscape and urban motifs through the reinterpretation of observed and mediated imagery. Working primarily from photographs captured in real life, as well as moments drawn from popular film and television, the artist translates these images onto canvas, examining the ways in which we perceive and construct our understanding of the world around us.

Landscape offers a universal point of entry: immediately recognisable, yet infinitely mutable. In these paintings, perspective is often deliberately disrupted, with elements juxtaposed and conventional spatial relationships unsettled. Place becomes ambiguous, and the familiar takes on an unfamiliar quality, creating a world in which reality seems suspended. Through this interplay between representation and abstraction,landscape becomes more than a subject to be described. It provides a framework for exploring perception, spatial relationships and the shifting boundaries between the real and the imagined.

The paintings reflect an ongoing process of exploration and questioning, challenging preconceived ideas of how we see, interpret and experience the world.