In Wonderland, artist Julie Scifo offers a singular, hypnotic reflection on the shifting physical and psychic landscapes of Western Sydney.
This newly commissioned exhibition draws upon threads of Scifo’s childhood in Penrith during the 1980s and 90s, weaving together a complex and textured narrative that combined memories, popular culture, suburban lore and self-introspection. Working with a kaleidoscopic lens, Scifo deploys cultural motifs and references that upend our expectations through recollection and remixing.
The exhibition’s title—Wonderland—pays homage to the once-iconic Sydney amusement park, a site of fantasy and escapism that, like so many spaces of collective joy, has since been erased, replaced – ironically – by a corporate business park. For Scifo, this transformation serves as a poignant reminder of the change occurring across Penrith and Western Sydney. Wonderland becomes a lens through which to examine the layers of meaning embedded in familiar places, and the ways in which art can unearth the forgotten or overlooked stories that reside there.
Best known for her earlier work as a street artist and zine-maker, Scifo now turns her focus to landscape painting—reimagined here through a critical and personal lens. In Wonderland, the landscapes are not romanticised visions of the natural world, but grounded in the everyday: Penrith’s High Street, suburban cul-de-sacs, factories and fibro houses. These are the spaces of Scifo’s youth, but reframed as fantastical. Her paintings are populated by the cultural references of a suburban childhood—figures like the BMX Bandits move through both real and speculative environments, colliding with symbols drawn from memory and emotion.
Scifo’s work speaks to broader questions about class, belonging, and access—who gets to represent a place, and who is invited to tell its stories? Wonderland ultimately celebrates the act of remembering and re-imagining, challenging hierarchies of culture and value. Through her art, Scifo invites audiences to reconsider the landscapes they move through daily—not as static backdrops, but as living, layered sites of meaning.
This exhibition is a homecoming of sorts, both tender and incisive—a tribute to the people, places, and moments that shape who we are and where we come from.
Julie Scifo is a Camperdown-born artist now based in Lithgow who explores how personal narratives echo collective experiences, through dominant themes of nostalgia, memory and personal history. Through her preferred medium of painting – which she considers to be a form of class rebellion – she considers grassroots culture with a sense of rebellion, humour, and play.
Julie Scifo studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Western Sydney from 2005-2007, was the winner of the Nepean art prize in 2024, and has been a finalist in prizes including the Blacktown City Art Prize, Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, and Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing. She is currently studying a Bachelor of Creative Practice at Nepean TAFE.
