Mark Forbes

Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2026 - Finalist

_{Image courtesy of artist.}

Mark Forbes
VIC

Musical chairs
2024
C-type silver halide colour print
65 x 74cm 

The space feels recently vacated—as if presence has just slipped out of frame, leaving only an imprint behind. I work through subtraction, there is no explicit need for the human figure when you can amplify its echo: a chair slightly turned, a reflection caught mid-glance, a place that still holds the temperature of someone who is no longer there.

These interiors and urban fragments resist completion. They exist in suspension, suspended between function and memory, between what has happened and what can no longer be witnessed. The absence is not emptiness—it is residue. A quiet tension lingers, asking us to reconstruct a narrative that refuses to fully return. In these images, humanity does not announce itself; it accumulates. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it inhabits the space where presence should be. It is the relatable and common thread that binds us all together.