Petrina Hicks (b. 1972) is a photographer whose work interrogates female identity and the representation of women throughout history. Born in Sydney, Hicks completed a degree in communications at the University of Canberra and then pursued her interest in photography at the ANU School of Art. While earning a living as a commercial photographer, she maintained a private focus on her art photography, and entered various art prizes and exhibitions. In 2003, she won both the Fisher's Ghost Art Award for Contemporary Art in Campbelltown, and the Josephine Ulrick Photography Award for Portraiture in Tweed Heads. Since then, she has been making series of photographs of individuals that strain the definition of portraiture, finding, it has been said, 'beauty in perceived imperfections and render[ing] idealised beauty strange'. She had her first exhibition with Sydney’s inner-city Stills Gallery in 2005, and the following year the National Portrait Gallery included a series of her immaculate, unsettling photographs in the exhibition Truth and Likeness. In 2016 she completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts, where she investigated the connection between humans and animals. Over her career Hicks has been represented in many solo and group exhibitions and her works are included in Australian and international collections. The National Gallery of Victoria held a major exhibition of her work Petrina Hicks: Bleached Gothic in 2019–2020.
The National Portrait Gallery is temporarily closed to the public until further notice.
