Jake Walker | At The Moment: {Suite}
Upcoming exhibition
My practice sits in a space where painting resists order, leaning instead into the spirit of informalism, a movement defined by its refusal to submit to rigid form or established hierarchies of art. Informalism, emerging in post-war Europe, rejected clean structure and prized spontaneity, raw gesture and materiality. For me, this is not just a historical reference point, but a living approach: paint is allowed to behave as it will, marks accumulate without needing to resolve, and surfaces carry the memory of their making.
At the same time, my work intersects with the aesthetics of graffiti, particularly the evolution of letter forms. Graffiti writing has long treated the alphabet as raw material: stretching, warping and abstracting letters until they sit at the edge of legibility. Graffiti shares affinities with informalism - both embrace accident, gesture, and process over polished completion. The city wall becomes, like the painter’s canvas, a site of energy, improvisation and refusal.
In my work, letters don’t announce themselves - they surface as fragments, bubbles, or gestural tags. Surfaces oscillate between communication and abstraction. By fusing informalist painting with the visual language of graffiti I expand the field of what painting can absorb. For me, it’s less about producing finished statements than about staying with the unresolved - gestures that refuse to settle, letters that refuse to be fully read, and surfaces that record the restless energy of making.
About Jake Walker
Born in Pōneke Wellington in 1971 and now based in Tasmania, Jake Walker graduated from Whitireia Art School in Wellington in 1989 and attended the Otago School of Fine Art, Dunedin. A Gertrude Contemporary resident studio artist from 2011 to 2012, he has exhibited widely across Australasia since the late 2000s. In 2010, he was highly commended in the RBS Emerging Artist Award and won the inaugural Arkley Award at NOTFAIR, Melbourne.
Walker’s work is represented in significant public collections on both sides of the Tasman, including Artbank Australia, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Chartwell Collection (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki), the Arts House Trust, the Bowman Collection and the Joyce Nissan Collection, as well as numerous private collections in New Zealand, Australia and beyond.
Jake Walker
Notch, 2025
Acrylic on linen mounted on plywood, glazed ceramic
410 x 390 mm
$7,500 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
The hill behind the hill, 2025
Acrylic on linen mounted on plywood, glazed ceramic
400 x 380 mm
$7,500 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
Catfacebummountain, 2025
Acrylic on poly cotton, glazed ceramic
560 x 470 mm
$9,000 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
Blue/Green, 2025
Oil on linen, glazed ceramic
540 x 530 x 20 mm
$10,000 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
Crack, 2025
Acrylic on linen mounted on plywood, glazed ceramic
360 x 470 mm
$7,500 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
German Silver (version 1), 2024-2025
Oil pigment stick on linen, glazed stoneware
620 x 520 x 40 mm
$9,000 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
German Silver (version 2), 2025
Oil pigment stick on poly cotton, glazed stoneware
520 x 620 x 40 mm
$9,000 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
Arlington Tower, 2025
Acrylic on poly cotton, glazed stoneware
540 x 500 x 120 mm
$10,000 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
Alley Cat, 2025
Oil on linen, glaze, ceramic, oxides
570 x 500 x 40 mm
$8,500 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
No Thing, 2025
Oil on linen
1220 x 914 mm
$8,500 incl. GST
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Jake Walker
Wouldn’t want to be you, 2025
Oil on poly cotton
1530 x 1020 mm
$10,000 incl. GST
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