Tobias liam higgins
Heavy body acrylic on canvas, 60 × 50 × 3 cm, 2026
 
Artwork Statement
Blurred reflects the shifting conditions of both environment and community within my local context. Over the past year, I have observed visible changes in the people and spaces around me, shaped by broader political tensions and social uncertainty.
The work draws directly from these observations, incorporating colours and textures sourced from local buildings and the clothing of people I have encountered. Through abstraction, these elements become layered and unstable, echoing the sense of transformation and unease that characterises the present moment.
Rather than depicting specific events, the painting captures an atmosphere — a condition of flux where boundaries between place, identity, and experience begin to blur. Within Distributed Worlds, the work reflects on how local realities are shaped by wider systems, and how personal experience becomes entangled with broader political and social change.
 
Artist Bio
Tobias Higgins is a Melbourne-based abstract painter whose practice is rooted in personal experience and local environment. Raised in South East Melbourne, his work draws on the landscapes, textures, and everyday encounters that have shaped his life. A recent graduate of LCI Melbourne with a degree in Visual Arts, Higgins has developed an autobiographical approach to painting, using colour, surface, and gesture to translate lived experience into abstract form.