Dirty Work By Jordy Hewitt
Michael Reid Northern Beaches presents Jordy Hewitt’s latest exhibition, Dirty Work – a raw, layered and deeply felt body of work that explores emotion, vulnerability and the messy reality of being human.
Words HANDE RENSHAW Photos HANNAH JONES
In her latest exhibition, Dirty Work, Jordy Hewitt leans into the raw and unresolved, exploring emotion through layered and instinctive works.
Dirty Work I by Jordy Hewitt.
“Dirty Work considers the tension between acceptance and expectation, learning to sit with yourself as you are.”
Jordy Hewitt’s work sits within the tension between self-acceptance and expectation.
Dirty Work IV by Jordy Hewitt.
Raised along the coastline of Boorloo/Perth and now based in Walyalup/Fremantle, Jordy Hewitt’s work draws closely from the movement, atmosphere and qualities of coastal life.
In her latest exhibition Dirty Work, opening at Michael Reid Northern Beaches, Jordy Hewitt continues her exploration of the psychological and bodily states that shape our experiences.
Her layered, gestural paintings feel instinctive and emotionally charged, carrying traces of tension, vulnerability and release across their surfaces.
The exhibition presents a new body of work centred on emotional processing, identity and the quieter labour attached to self-definition. Jordy approaches painting less as representation and more as a physical and sensory process guided by intuition, repetition and material movement. Gesture, erosion and layered textures become ways of articulating experiences that often resist language, allowing emotion to remain visible within the work itself.
Across the exhibition, abstraction and figuration move fluidly in and out of focus. Certain forms appear briefly recognisable before dissolving again into atmosphere and gesture, creating paintings that feel unsettled, shifting and emotionally open-ended. Rather than offering fixed narratives, the works leave space for contradiction and ambiguity to remain present. There is a constant tension between heaviness and restraint, control and surrender, intimacy and distance.
Raised along the coastline of Boorloo/Perth and now based in Walyalup/Fremantle, Jordy’s practice remains informed by the sensory and elemental qualities of coastal life. Movement, fluidity and changing emotional states sit beneath the surface of her work, shaping a visual language that feels connected to atmosphere and bodily perception.
The title Dirty Work gestures toward the messier realities of being human and the unseen emotional labour that shapes everyday life. Rather than smoothing over discomfort or uncertainty, Jordy allows these states to remain visible within the paintings themselves. Thick surfaces, fractured marks and softened gestures create works that feel worked-through rather than neatly resolved.
The exhibition embraces sensitivity and emotional intensity as necessary parts of lived experience. Jordy’s paintings resist perfection in favour of something more tactile, instinctive and honest, creating a body of work that feels both deeply physical and psychologically charged.
Stay up to date with Jordy Hewitt
Dirty Work at Michael Reid Northern Beaches: 21 May – 13 June
