Gold Coast artist Michael Zavros returning to hometown as guest director for Bleach festival

The Gold Coast tried to cancel him, but internationally acclaimed artist Michael Zavros is braving a homecoming as guest artistic director for Bleach. He promises audiences will not be disappointed – but might be shocked.

Michael Zavros dares the Gold Coast to cancel him.

After all, it’s been attempted before. Back in 2021, the acclaimed international artist’s hyper-realistic painting of a young boy’s bare bottom, hung on display at HOTA, prompted calls that it promoted pedophilia and should be removed.

But just as this city has never shied away from provocation, neither has Zavros himself … and now this former Coombabah boy is braving a homecoming as guest artistic director for Bleach.

While the arts festival is still months away, scheduled for July 30 to August 10, Zavros has promised audiences will not be disappointed – although they might be shocked.

It’s a signature move for the artist once described as ‘the Derek Zoolander of the Australian art world, a ridiculously good-looking male model masquerading as a conceptual, postmodern artist’.

In fact, the Gold Coast has long been something of a muse to Zavros, whose works regularly sell for well over six-figures and hang in galleries around the world, including the National Gallery, as well as in the homes of A-listers.

Growing up in the 1980s on acreage in the western wilds of the city, it was the absence of a sophisticated arts scene that fuelled his hunger and drive.

Acclaimed artist Michael Zavros, who is guest artistic director for Bleach 2025, in front of some of his work in the HOTA Gallery. He's already started planning some surprises for the winter festival. Picture Glenn Hampson

Now, with both Zavros and the city all grown up, he can’t wait to return to this ‘gleaming, glamorous metropolis’ and test its cultural maturity.

“The point of art is to make people talk, but I think we live in a time where we now fear a negative response because people who are triggered are able to have it removed or have it cancelled,” said Zavros, who directed the opening of HOTA in 2021.

“I think a lot about this because my work has drawn controversy, but I grew up in a time where we liked to be challenged by something. I was drawn to things that challenged my ideas about who I was or my politics or my faith or sexuality or whatever it might be.

“I do think we’ve reached that zenith though and cancel culture is now itself being pushed back.

“You want your work to elicit a strong response, positive or negative. We need to lean into all of these responses to art, that’s the point of it. All responses are absolutely valid and we need to welcome that and respect it … but not remove or cancel the work.

“Art is not a wall print from Ikea. If you’re approaching the work on whether you want to hang it in your living room, you’ve missed the point.”

Given the pearl-clutching reaction from a minority of the Gold Coast public to not only the bare bum depicted in his Zeus/Zavros painting, which featured his son and daughter, but also to the random religious protests against Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s HOTA sculpture over concerns it represents a satanic child sacrifice, Zavros said he was braced for the response to his plans for Bleach.

Michael Zavros - Zeus/Zavros

However, he said the reward was worth the risk.

“There are definitely going to be works that are very provocative and do what I think art does best, which is challenge our ideas of who we are, and the society that we live in. I think that’s good,” said Zavros, who was approached by Bleach Festival founder and Experience Gold Coast board member Louise Bezzina to take on this new role following a foray curating the closing of the 2022 Brisbane Festival.

“I think audiences here are ready for it.

“We’ve been working on the program for close to six months and I’m coming up with ideas of things that I would like to see or that somehow reflect my experience of the Gold Coast and my personal history of the Gold Coast.

“I’ve had some real pie-in-the-sky ideas, a program like you would expect in New York or London or Paris, and I think we are going to deliver something totally unexpected.

“One of the things that is happening, and I won’t believe it till it actually happens, it is so big that I just cannot get my head around the fact that this person is coming.”

While Zavros said he was sworn to secrecy about the big reveal, he was open and honest when it came to his feelings towards his old hometown.

He said while the Gold Coast had certainly grown and changed for the better since the 1980s, he had always found the city inspiring.

Indeed, with accolades including the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, the world’s richest portraiture prize, Zavros said his rise to the top of the Australian art world mimicked the popularity of the Coast itself – beauty sells.

“I was very lucky in that the art I chose to make, painting and realism, is probably 90 per cent of the art market,” he said.

“So while there’s a critical context to my career, there was also this certain market power because it’s beautiful.

“But I also think that growing up in a place and time where we didn’t have a centre like HOTA or all the sophisticated things the city now has, it made me hungry to find those things somehow.

“I think of people like Baz Luhrmann or Leigh Bowery, both from small country towns, and they became successful at what they loved almost because they were deprived of it when younger. That deprivation creates the drive.

Acclaimed artist Michael Zavros, who is guest artistic director for Bleach 2025, in front of some of his work in the HOTA Gallery. . Picture Glenn Hampson

“I think also being Greek and having this sort of Euro-sensibility, but being away from even my relatives in Melbourne with a more cosmopolitan life, it sort of makes you dream outside of your everyday experience.

“But I would never denigrate the Gold Coast. We had a farm with horses and yet were 20 minutes from the most beautiful beaches in the world, that’s a wonderful thing.

“There was always that hint of glamour as well, there’s always been money pouring into the city, from the Sanctuary Cove opening with Whitney Houston and Frank Sinatra, and even the big fashion labels always came here first before Brisbane, it’s a sexy city. And whatever piece was missing before, now it’s here.”

Despite, or perhaps even because of, the reaction to his work exhibited at HOTA, Zavros said the cultural centre was greater than he ever imagined.

He said even in its more modest inception as the former Gold Coast Arts Centre, it had forever marked both his professional and personal life.

“I used to work at the Gold Coast City Art Gallery as a volunteer, over at the old building, and I met my partner Alison there as well.

“To see it now is incredible, the Gold Coast has put a huge amount of money and effort into the arts and it has paid off.

“I remember this new building at its inception, it was exciting then and now I think it ranks closer to a state museum in scale and mission than a regional art gallery.

“The gallery just gave me so much – it gave me a social life and it gave me an entry into the art world.”

Now Zavros is excited to give back to his hometown.

Just like the Gold Coast itself, it doesn’t matter whether you love or hate his work … just as long as you pay attention.

Originally published as Gold Coast artist Michael Zavros returning to hometown as guest director for Bleach festival