Geelong Gallery

We’re excited to share that Richard Lewer will be presenting a major solo exhibition ‘I Only Talk to God When I Want Something’ at Geelong Gallery in November 2025. 

‘I Only Talk to God When I Want Something’ brings together key series that reflect Lewer’s lived experience of Catholicism and the rituals and moral framework that underpin it. From Confessions (2024) comprising 106 painted panels created through a participatory project whereby Lewer heard and then painted the personal confessions of gallery visitors, and Seven Deadly Sins (2023) interpreting the age-old sins of sloth, wrath, greed, envy, gluttony, pride, and lust through iconic art historical images (by artists such as Francisco Goya, Edouard Manet, Jan van Eyck, and John Brack), to Stations of the Cross (2007-08) recording the fourteen stages of Jesus’s crucifixion, the exhibition reveals Lewer’s connection to and interpretation of the faith system under which he was raised. 

Extending on the exhibition’s themes, a new series of paintings commissioned by Geelong Gallery and inspired by the Last Judgement will be premiered. As Geelong Gallery Director & CEO Humphrey Clegg says ‘Richard Lewer is one of Australia’s most loved and significant contemporary artists. His ability to examine, reflect upon, and represent our shared experience of the contemporary world around us through his artwork makes him an artist that everybody should know.’⁠

Richard Lewer’s ‘I Only Talk to God When I Want Something’ will be presented from 15 November 2025 to 1 March 2026 at Geelong Gallery.

Pictured (above): Richard Lewer, Envy (After Edouard Manet), 2023, acrylic on brass, 100 x 100 cm. Photo by Christian Cappuro