Joshua de Gruchy

Sitting on a rock, Mount Alexander, Acrylic on board, 31.5 x 34 cm, framed in Tasmanian oak, 2025

Joshua de Gruchy

Top Shelf June 2025

Top Shelf: an in-house curated space for small artworks, rotated monthly.

oshua de Gruchy (b.1999) is an artist informed by the Australian landscape and his alternative approach to fine arts education through travel and self-directed research. Central to de Gruchy’s practice is time spent in the bush where walking, camping, and sketching allows him to closely study colour, form, and rhythms of the terrain. Back in the studio, these impressions are filtered through and used as reference, resulting in works hovering between figuration and abstraction that seek to express the sensory experience of being there.

This collection comprises those field studies and marks de Gruchy’s first series of work since relocating from Wilyakali Country (Broken Hill) in far west New South Wales to Dja Dja Wurrung Country (Castlemaine) in central Victoria.

Since arriving in the region, de Gruchy has explored Mount Alexander and the nearby bushlands of Fryerstown, where the tangled structures of fallen tree limbs and the remnants of old gold-digging sites became subjects of interest in his effort to understand the history and distinctive palette of his unfamiliar surroundings.