Phil Hayes
Melbourne-based artist whose paintings, sculptures and limited edition prints explore Australian identity, suburbia and memory anchored by the iconic thylacine.
The work
Oil on canvas, sculptural works, and limited edition prints all unified by a deep inquiry into place, loss, and Australian myth.
Phil Hayes is a Melbourne-based painter and sculptor whose work centres on the thylacine, the extinct Tasmanian tiger, as both subject and personal trademark.
What began in the 1990s as a recurring figure in suburban commentary paintings became, over decades, a lens through which Hayes examines Australia's colonial history, its relationship with the natural world, and the quiet melancholy of memory.
His paintings place the thylacine in familiar Australian settings beside vintage cars, on plinths in manicured gardens, overlooking coastal lighthouses rendered with tenderness and precision, as a presence that refuses to stay extinct.
Beyond canvas, Hayes produces hand-finished sculptures and limited edition prints that have found collectors across Australia and internationally.
Australian identity
What it means to belong to a continent shaped by colonisation, suburbia, and selective memory. The tension between pride and reckoning.
Extinction & loss
The thylacine as a ghost a warning about what happens when power, economics, and indifference converge. An animal we chose not to protect.
Suburbia & memory
The quiet drama of Australian suburban life. Brick veneer homes, 1970s cars, clipped lawns, familiar scenes made strange by the presence of the impossible.
