The Lennox + & Gallery Sorrento: Only Human #2
Salon Exhibition
Only Human #2
3–24 June 2026
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Curator: Julie Collins
Curatorial Assistant: Matisse Stynes
Discover more:
Image: Jesse with fellow Artist Joshua Searle at the joint opening of Only Human #2 and Con mucho Gusto (With great pleasure) - Joshua Searle’s solo exhibition.
About the Piece: ‘Anchor’
This work speaks directly to the exhibition’s examination of vulnerability and emotional truth. Jesse Thompson approaches portraiture not as representation alone, but as a means of mapping interior experience — the quiet devastation of grief and the tentative movement toward healing. Raw surfaces, unfinished passages and handmade linen grounds become extensions of the emotional state embedded within each work, reflecting hesitation, tenderness and instability.
The painting resist resolution. Instead, they acknowledge grief as ongoing, nonlinear and transformative. Through instinctive colour choices and emotionally charged mark-making, the works reveal how love persists within absence, and how identity itself can be reshaped through mourning. Jesse’s portraits ultimately become acts of remembrance and survival — meditations on the difficult, deeply human task of continuing to live while carrying loss.
About the Exhibition: Only Human #2
This exhibition follows on from Only Human #1 which was presented at our Fed Sq Gallery in 2022.
It continues the exploration of the expression itself, Only Human, which is often used as an excuse for bad behaviour or weakness, a plea that we shouldn’t be held responsible because our flaws are interweaved within in our very being.
When many think about the human in art they go to traditional portraiture which to often dominates the public attention through exhibitions like the Archibald Prize and its celebration of identity, status and celebrity. Yet the artists we have selected here seek to move beyond representation alone and examine what it truly means to be human.
The works in Only Human #2 explore the fragile space between vulnerability and responsibility. While the phrase “only human” is often used to flawed behaviour, this exhibition asks whether it can instead become a point of reflection — a reminder of our shared imperfections, emotional complexity and capacity for empathy.
The artists included approach humanity from diverse perspectives. Some employ traditional portraiture, where emotion and narrative are carried through the gaze, gesture and presence of the subject. Others take a more abstract approach, exploring the darker instincts of human behaviour, internal conflict, shame, isolation, desire and man’s effect on this planet. Together, the works reveal both the tenderness and brutality of the human condition.
At its core, Only Human is an exhibition about connection — to ourselves, to others, and to the emotional truths that unite us. It acknowledges the contradictions of being human: our ability to hurt and heal, to fail and grow, to disconnect and belong.
To be “only human” should not be an excuse. It should be an invitation to understand ourselves more deeply — and perhaps, to be better.
