Shame vs structure

Loneliness has historically been presented as a personal failing, a feature of a deficient personality, and hence a source of shame. Shame creates a barrier which prevents sharing and connection with others who could provide validation and support. Cooper (2024) advocates reauthoring the ‘shameful personal defect’ of loneliness as a response to systemic pressures and injustices. Wilkinson (2022) agrees that loneliness is a political issue and argues that the popular slogan ‘Loneliness doesn’t discriminate’ effectively obscures the heteronormative dominance, economic and racial inequalities, domestic violence, housing insecurity and social abandonment that exhaust people and disconnect them from their communities. Using a feminist lens, Barbosa (2026) advocated for ‘bed-rotting’ as an intentional withdrawal of female labour from an exploitative patriarchal system, and it is interesting to potentially reframe the experience of Matila-Smith’s ‘sad girl’ in this light.

Private vs public

Lucy Liu and Melissa Nguyen investigate feelings of aloneness and loneliness through cultural connections, family and migration. In three large acrylic paintings, En cachette (2008), Je suis, Envois-moi (2008) and Moi et Les Autres (2008), Liu plays with the Japanese tradition of shunga, stylised erotica created for mass-production by the painstaking process of woodblock printing. Liu’s fluid brushstrokes indicate an affective engagement with the material, in contrast with the highly controlled process of conventional shunga. Alone and with others, her larger than life, partially clothed figures are given permission to cavort sensually on the canvas where they are the focus of meaning-making by the viewer and possibly the artist herself. What is private and what is public? Could Liu be using the canvas as transitional object to explore her identity, whilst remaining emotionally intact?

Figure 12. Lucy Liu, En Cachette, Je suis. Envois-moi and Moi et Les Autres, 2008, acrylic on canvas, from the Shunga series. Installation view.

An conceal–reveal is also contained in Melissa Nguyen’s A letter to my mother; A letter to your mother, three large diptychs painted with rabbit-skin glue on canvas, almost monochrome, so that the subject is only visible when the light hits at particular angles. Nguyen maintains a high degree of control over the medium, functioning in the cognitive-symbolic level of the ETC to explore highly personal and emotive subject matter. Her work is a public record of her effort to get closer to her mother, who arrived in Australia as a refugee from Vietnam and has only one photo of her early life. Applying a trauma-informed lens, it is quite probable that both mother and daughter are on a journey where displacement trauma is being processed through art-making at a safe rate, and that future works may be less visually ambiguous. When asked why she made her paintings so difficult to ‘read’, Nguyen replied, “Because it’s about my family, not yours”, drawing an important distinction between her inner and outer worlds, what is for private and what is for public consumption (M. Nguyen, personal communication, 4 July 2026).

Figure 13. Melissa Nguyen, A letter to my mother; A letter to your mother, 2026, rabbit-skin glue on canvas. Installation view.

Eco-art therapy and reintegrating with nature

Kayla Mattes’s integration of rapid digital technology and slow artmaking by hand in Lonely Planet may represent a flight from loneliness towards a connection with nature. Loneliness, powerlessness, hopelessness and depression are all feelings associated with climate change and species extinction (Wharldell, 2024). Conversely, time spent in and with nature has been shown to decrease psychological distress and depression (Hyvönen, 2023). Gideon Appah’s dual screen video installation Beyond the shadows: Gideon Appah Poetic Vision features calming coastal scenery of West Africa, the physical beauty and strength of able-bodied youth surfing, and a gentle, meditative voice reassuring the audience to trust our inherent power, to fully inhabit our bodies and to just be, rather than do. The theme of nature as companion is repeated in Appah’s painting, Boy with a bird (2023), and I wonder about cultural influences in the idea of loneliness and connections with nature.

Figure 14. Gideon Appah, Beyond the shadows: Gideon Appah Poetic Vision, 2025, two-channel video with sound. Installation view.

Figure 15. Gideon Appah, Boy with a bird, 2023, acrylic and oil on canvas. Installation view.

Existential loneliness caused by ecological destruction is reflected in Kelly Yu’s video Endling, a satirical ‘documentary’ about Pau Pau, the last goldfish on Earth, and his devoted caretaker, Richard. Although a solitary figure, Richard appears to be content; his life has purpose. Richard’s attempts to entertain Pau Pau are bizarre and hilarious. However, when he dies, Pau Pau is truly alone, his one secure attachment severed, his future at the mercy of a ruthless corporate world. Yu’s work provides an external vehicle onto which we can project feelings of loneliness, and the fear of being truly and irrevocably alone amidst total structural collapse.

Figure 16. Kelly Yu, Endlings, 2024, short film. Partial installation view showing detail of video screen.

Changing the narrative

Using a narrative therapy lens (White & Epston, 1990) – externalisation of the problem of loneliness and creating new narratives to replace the old ones that no longer (or never did) serve us – is a focus for Nick Mullaly and Callum McGrath. Mullaly’s luminous paintings capture moments in time from his life post-Covid and post-breakup, when he decided to go out clubbing again. Full of light and warmth, some movement, some stillness, a sense of community and camaraderie is evident. Mullaly spoke of his love of dance music and the function of Melbourne’s queer club scene as almost religious gathering spaces after lockdown (Mullaly, personal communication, 4 July 2026). The fluidity of oil paint indicates an affective component in Mullaly’s work, emotions that are contained within the borders of the six small and three larger canvases.

Figure 17. Nick Mullaly, (clockwise from left) Toss, Second wind, Payment, Peering, Key apparition, Microphone, 2026, oil on canvas. Installation view.

In the adjoining room, there is no sequential logic to Callum McGrath’s What’s after this?, which echoes a common presentation of trauma memories (Van der Kolk, 2015). The experience is highly sensory. There may be a feeling of loneliness when surrounded by other people. McGrath rewrites his own story, as well as reclaiming and centring the stories of queer dance culture, “the stories that no one else was going to write” (McGrath, personal communication, 4 July 2026). This is vividly illustrated in crowd scenes, with people turning their phones to selfie mode, thus inserting themselves into history. McGrath’s work is also a homage to iconic venues and artworks, as he actively archives what may otherwise be lost. Healing trauma, integrating different aspects of identity, and reframing shame narratives are all central to the work of these two artists.

Figure 18. Callum McGrath, What’s after this?, 2026, two-channel video with sound, haze, box truss. Installation view.

Conclusion

On leaving the gallery, I feel strangely unmoved and personally under-represented. My own experience of what loneliness can mean is most fully validated by Borland’s embodied response, the despair of Matila-Smith’s ‘sad girl’ and the loss and fear of loss expressed in Yu’s video. I am unable to read a felt sense of the life-sapping void of loneliness in most of the other artworks, which either emanate poignant yearning and sorrow, or present an escape from loneliness altogether. I definitely want more: the loneliness of ageing, of being in an unloving relationship, of illness and disability, of being homeless, a stranger, an inmate, and all the loneliness caused by difference and exclusion and stigma, and which, as the curators acknowledge in the scholarly exhibition catalogue (which contains some excellent essays) they are unable to include. Ultimately, by privileging a ‘top-down’ approach and focusing on emotional containment, they have created a psychologically safe environment where visitors can explore loneliness on an intellectual level without necessarily feeling it. And to be fair, there are more than enough challenges for us all outside the gallery walls.