Gabriel Cole


AVAILABLE WORKS

In Hot Generation, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Gabriel Cole crafts a body of work that is at once deeply personal and widely resonant, drawing on the layered intersections of identity, culture, and consumerism. The exhibition takes its title from Paul Witzig’s 1967 surf film, a cultural marker of the Australian longboard era, yet the works transcend nostalgia, channeling the year 1967 as a conceptual anchor. For Cole, “1967” becomes both a framework and a cipher—an emblem of change and upheaval that is manipulated, disrupted, and reimagined across his practice.

Cole's creative lexicon is one of paradox and tension. He juxtaposes painterly abstraction with graphic rigidity, much like his multifaceted career as a painter, designer, and former Paralympian. His works wrestle with structure and distortion, reflecting his own trajectory—a life marked by discipline, artistic exploration, and profound empathy for the rawness of human experience. The aesthetic of Hot Generation mirrors this tension: soft hues of beach flora dissolve into brutalist strokes of anger and frustration, while sleek graphic elements evoke the polished veneer of consumer culture. These are not simply harmonious works; they are fractured, layered, and alive with contradiction.

Central to this series is the phrase “1967,” emblazoned across glass paintings, ceramics, and a collaborative surfboard. The repetition of this element recalls Cole’s fascination with logos and semiotics, reflecting on our societal obsession with identity through consumerism. Yet, Cole does not settle for mere critique. His works speak to the fragility and futility underlying this obsession. Like his surfboard collaboration with Jack Del Rennie, the logo becomes a sculptural entity—a product of the past reframed as an artefact of today’s commodified culture. Cole’s hand in these works—a physical force shaping glass, resin, and oil—is a counterpoint to the machine-like precision of logos, grounding the works in an emotional immediacy that is both tender and unrelenting.

The ocean, a recurring theme in Cole’s life as a surfer, serves as a metaphorical through-line. Traditionally a place of solace and freedom, the ocean here is troubled, overlaid by societal expectations and cultural commodification. The works oscillate between celebration and critique of beach culture, their textile-inspired patterns and resin decals capturing both the organic beauty of the natural world and its exploitation through consumerism. Stripes—a recurring abstract motif—echo both the rhythm of waves and the stark lines of mass production. Through this interplay, Cole explores the duality of human existence: our longing for connection and reprieve, and the systems that fragment and distort these desires.

Cole’s artistic process is equally dualistic. He begins with meticulous, trade-driven techniques such as screen printing, exposing screens, and applying silver leaf, echoing both the precision of his past experience as a sign-writer and his upbringing with a father who runs a crash-repair shop. This calculated foundation is disrupted by his painterly approach—gestural, impromptu, and cathartic. This disruption is deliberate, embodying the dissonance between order and chaos, public and private, industrial and organic. His exploration of glass as a medium—a material both fragile and rigid—underscores this tension and reinforces the relevance of trade materials used within his practice.

The exhibition’s sculptural elements further extend this dialogue. Aluminium frames fabricated by Adelaide artist James Dodd encase the glass works, emphasising the interplay between the fragility of glass as a medium and the structural weight of steel. This deliberate juxtaposition evokes a Donald Judd-inspired minimalist aesthetic, grounded in references to prefabrication and industrial design. Judd’s influence is particularly evident in Cole’s approach to installation, where the spatial arrangement of works plays a critical role. By adopting Judd’s language of repetition and industrial materials, Cole situates his works within a broader minimalist tradition while reshaping it to address themes of identity and consumerism.

This influence is also evident in the dual-sided presentation of his glass works and upside down presentation of the surfboard, allowing the audience to view both the front and back of each piece. This strategy mirrors Judd’s emphasis on spatial engagement and the idea of works existing autonomously within their environment. Yet, while Judd pursued pure form and object-hood, Cole’s works embed personal and cultural narratives, layering Judd’s structural clarity with emotional resonance and historical context.  

Cole’s work identifies with subcultures and marginalised groups, driven by his personal experiences. His sensitivity to pain—physical, emotional, societal—is palpable in the tormented energy of Hot Generation. The sharp edges of his ceramics and the rawness of his brushstrokes mimic the tactile experience of ceramic-making, where the act of shaping becomes a visceral expression of emotion. Yet beneath this torment lies a deep well of love and empathy. Cole’s works invite us to sit with discomfort, to see beauty in imperfection, and to question the systems that shape our identities.

At its core, Hot Generation is a meditation on coexistence: between the personal and the public, the organic and the industrial, the nostalgic and the contemporary. Through abstraction, graphic identity, and sculptural innovation, Cole creates a body of work that is both deeply rooted in its references and unmoored from their constraints. It is an exhibition that resists easy interpretation, instead offering a space for reflection, disruption, and connection. In this way, Gabriel Cole’s Hot Generation becomes not just an artistic statement, but an emotional journey—a testament to the complexities of living, creating, and navigating a world in flux.

Gabriel Cole is an artist and designer based in Naarm/Melbourne, originally from Adelaide. His multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, painting, film, sound, and textiles, adapting fluidly to the conceptual demands of each body of work.

Cole’s work is rooted in the exploration of semiotics and motifs, often incorporating signage and branding as visual and emotional entities. His approach combines a meticulous painterly technique with an embrace of organic imperfection, creating layered compositions where refined craftsmanship meets spontaneous abstraction. Materials are torn, folded, and disrupted, allowing for natural deconstruction while maintaining a deliberate sense of balance and form.

Through these processes, Cole challenges the boundaries of identity and cultural symbols, interrogating their original intent and reframing them in ambiguous contexts. His work reflects a dissolution of pop culture, blurring distinctions between personal and societal narratives, between polished graphic precision and raw, emotive gestures.

Cole’s practice invites viewers to navigate these blurred lines, creating space for reflection on the intersection of the external world and internal experience.