Very Serious Artist
Grant x Wilkes & Micah Rustichelli
- Sitter: Micah Rustichelli
- Medium: Digital print on Lycra fabric, polyester thread, specimen pins, metal fixtures.
- Dimensions: 120cm x 180cm
- Representation: This artist represents themselves
- Categories: Female artist, Digital or photographic artwork, Performing arts and music industry
About the artwork
Micah Rustichelli is a queer performance fixture of Brisbane, taking out the inaugural Altimate.Showdown title against sixty local alternative performers and named Queens Ball Artist of the Year in 2023. Micah has also performed at numerous festivals including Dark Mofo and Woodford Folk Festival.
This portrait is a collaboration between Micah and Grant x Wilkes. Not just a photograph but a playful, humorous depiction of Micah’s theatrical clown persona. Photographed leaping on one leg in heels, the image is flipped upside down, the body hovering between elegance and collapse, like a specimen caught mid-transformation. Micah’s painted face becomes a mischievous mask, where a strange optical illusion is revealed when viewed the right way up. The work embraces clowning, absurdity and camp as tools for questioning seriousness, considering how identity can be pulled, stretched and warped in states of performance. A parody of a person stretched into contradiction, very seriously.
About the artist
Micah Rustichelli’s practice spans sculpture, painting, performance, circus and nightlife arts. They use humour, play and familiar media to approach contemporary concerns with a wide range of audiences in galleries, festivals, and nightclubs.
Grant x Wilkes is a collaborative partnership between Claire Grant and Lee Wilkes exploring the evolving relationship between image, material, process and place. Combining analogue and digital processes with historical craftsmanship, their work pushes photography beyond its traditional boundaries. Award winners at the 2025 Brisbane Portrait Prize. Their exhibition (In)Sight features at Metro Arts as part of the 2026 Brisbane Festival.
