Spence Messih is an artist living and working on Gadigal and Wangal Country. His practice incorporates sculpture, installation, and text and is attuned to the nuances of materiality, pressure, and transformation. A central concern is the ways in which knowledge is shaped and shared—how stories, whether factual, fictional, or somewhere in between, help us navigate identity and meaning. Drawing on abstraction as a tactic to explore the social, political, and ethical forces that shape gendered embodiment, he explores the malleability of language, architecture, bodies, and notions of truth—revealing their impermanence, contradictions, and ability to change.

Their work has been exhibited at UTS Gallery & Art Collection, Sydney; Murray Art Museum Albury; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art; as well as Auto Italia, London and Artspace, Sydney; among others. Messih’s work is held in the collections of Artbank, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and MAMA. Writing projects include 'Ghost-writing boyhood: A hauntology of testosterone' with Astrid Lorange for the Australian Feminist Studies Journal; 'Mathew Jones', as part of ‘Queer Readings of the Monash University Collection' (2021); and 'Our Father, Who Art in Heaven', with Vincent Silk for Sydney Review of Books (2021). They completed a PhD titled 'Double Bind:(Trans)materiality and Tactics of Abstraction' at UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture in 2021.

Recently

'A river runs through' UTS Gallery, 5 May 2026 – 21 August 2026, in development to tour to regional galleries from 2026 in partnership with Museums & Galleries of NSW. 

'Ghost-writing boyhood: On the self-determination of the trans boy and his haunting of the sex/gender binary', Astrid Lorange & Spence Messih, Australian Feminist Studies Journal, 2025.

'Hold the world to its word', Murray Art Museum Albury, September 2024 – March 2025.

'Double Take: Photographs from the Artbank Collection', Artbank Melbourne, 4 March – 26 April 2024.

'Living Patterns: Contemporary Australian Abstraction', Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, 23 September 2023 – 4 February 2024

‘Minor Truths', Murray Art Museum Albury, October 2022 – February 2023.