Gene A'hern: Dawn Chorus

CASSANDRA BIRD is delighted to announce Dawn Chorus, a solo exhibition of new paintings by artist Gene A’Hern.

 Dawn Chorus marks a pivotal moment in Gene A’Hern’s artistic practice, coinciding with his recent solo exhibition in Los Angeles and his receipt of the prestigious Sir John Sulman Art Prize from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This series of new paintings continues A’Hern’s investigation into the poetics of place, memory, and cyclical time, using painting as a means of documenting lived experience. This series is underpinned by the idea of dawn as both a literal and symbolic event, a daily phenomenon that signals renewal, continuity, and the quiet possibility of transformation. Drawing inspiration from the smallest of birds whose early calls signal the beginning of day, A’Hern positions the 'Dawn Chorus’ as a metaphor for the rhythm of the seasons and the shifting interplay of colour and light that animates our visual world.

 Executed with a dynamic material vocabulary, ranging from oil stick and pastel to gestural layers of paint on linen, paper or board, A’Hern’s work reveal a commitment to texture, surface, and expressive mark-making. His paintings oscillate between abstraction and narrative, collapsing distinctions between personal history, familial memory, and broader painterly traditions.  A’Hern constructs images that are simultaneously energetic and intimate. Dawn Chorus not only reflects the artist’s continued exploration of painting as a time-based medium but also evokes a deeper reflection on renewal and how the act of making can mirror the natural cycles that shape both the world around us and the inner landscapes we carry.

Gene A’hern (b. 1993, Katoomba Australia) holds a B.F.A. from the National Art School, Sydney (2016). He has held solo exhibitions in Australia, the United States, and Europe, including, Charged Memory in Hill House at Simchowitz in Los Angeles (2025), The Storm that Grew Us at Cassandra Bird, Sydney (2024); A Curtain Through the Trees at Brigade Gallery, Copenhagen (2023); and Day Pours Speech, Night Reveals Knowledge at Simchowitz, Los Angeles (2022). His work has been featured in group exhibitions internationally in Hill House at Simchowitz, Los Angeles, and Color Coded at Bode Gallery, Berlin.

Gene A’Hern was just recently announced as the Winner of the Sir John Sulman art prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.