La Maison de Beaumont, Beaumont-de-Pertuis, Provence, France
June 27th 2025
To celebrate the prolific bodies of work created at their French artist residency, Australian artists Vittoria Cugno, Cathy Quinn and Mary Deutscher hosted a group exhibition in Mary’s accommodation. Vittoria’s figurative and candid oil paintings, Cathy’s imaginative and free spirited oil/watercolour landscapes and Mary’s precise and intimate hand painted ceramic pinch pots came together and showcased each artist’s unique perspective of their French countryside stay.
Images by Vittoria Cugno
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Abbotsford Convent, Abbotsford, VIC
March 1st-2nd 2025
As part of Platform Presents’ annual celebration of International Womxn’s Day, Vittoria’s paintings bring feminine casual life living to the dinner table:
“In these candid scenes, I am consciously looking for female and non-gender conforming individuals to have the focusing interaction in my paintings. Historically, women were sought to be painted for the male’s gaze, by the male’s gaze, and were usually isolated and confined to domestic spaces. However, my paintings of candid interactions show that women and non-gender conforming folk are just as capable of normal life living as men, and deserve to have their casual conversations immortalised in paintings.”
Image #1 courtesy of Platform Presents
Image #2 by Vittoria Cugno
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Unassigned Gallery, Brunswick, VIC
February 14th-21st 2025
For Valentines day, Unassigned Gallery hosted a group show to celebrate their favourite colour, pink. The gallery was full to the brim with pink artworks that kindled a fun and playful mood in the space. Vittoria’s pastel drawing Conversations With You was selected as the hero image for the event.
Images by Natalie Edge @natalie.edge_photography
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Gallery Unbound, Northcote, VIC
January 8th-26th 2025
Vittoria’s debut solo exhibition, showcasing all seven of her paintings created for her Honours project at RMIT. The candid and leisurely scenes depicted in her snapshot based, large-scale oil paintings, created a sense of time playing out at differing speeds – as momentariness. With heightened colour bouncing off the walls in the gallery, Vittoria’s exhibition conveyed affect and the sensation of each represented moment.
Images by Vittoria Cugno
Minor Momentariness Zine
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RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC
December 3rd-8th 2024
THE FUTURE IS FICKLE: A FALSE PROMISE
Vittoria’s Honours research project formed as a dedication to the early passing of her father. She learned that our futures are not promised and that the way we spend our time is precious. Her research aims to give agency to fleeting, everyday moments as a response to the productionist pressures of capitalism and neoliberalism. Her project involves taking snapshots of candid, everyday interactions and dedicating time and labour to turn them into large-scale oil paintings. Vittoria’s paintings are representational, each using dominant and heightened colour to convey a mood and feeling. The combination of colour and energetic brushstrokes elicits an affective response in the viewer that highlights the beauty of the quotidian. Each painting includes figures informally interacting with each other or their environment in moments of leisure to emphasise that these often-forgotten moments are as important as time at work. Vittoria rejects the idea that we live to work or that only moments of productivity are worth remembering, and she hopes her paintings facilitate a shift in others’ perception towards recognising that everyday moments are precious.
Image #1 courtesy of RMIT
Image #2-#4 by Phuong Nguyen Le @phuong.io
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RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC
November 21st-26th 2023
CANDID: AN APPRECIATION OF MOMENTS THAT ARE OFTEN OVERLOOKED
Vittoria’s third year project focused on capturing candid moments in her lived life, and representing them as paintings to show appreciation for these small, light-hearted and often overlooked memories. In this body of works, she experimented with fan brush techniques to blur the wet and rendered parts of her paintings to create a sense of movement.
Images by Vittoria Cugno
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I acknowledge the people of the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung language groups of the Kulin nation as the Traditional Owners of the lands that I reside and work in. I pay my respects to their Elders of the past, present and future. Sovereignty has never been ceded. It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.