Nickolas Gauci, The Wrestlers

Nickolas Gauci

The Wrestlers, 2025,

Acrylic and oil on canvas,

120x150cm,

$1650

Artist Bio
Nickolas Gauci is queer Maltese/Australian painter and ceramicist, working in Naarm on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung lands. Nickolas has been a practicing artist for over 10 years, specialising in painting, drawing, and ceramics. He graduated from The University of New South Wales Art and Design in 2015, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. 

His work is often self-biographical, using his Maltese/Australian heritage as a source of inspiration, weaving together elements of memory and nostalgia to contextualise the cross-section of these two cultures. Nickolas’s work is bold and playful, using a bright colour palette and a camp aesthetic to explore ideas of class, culture and identity.

Nickolas has participated in residencies and exhibited his work both nationally and internationally. In 2023 he was the winner of the People‘s Choice Award out of over 100 artists in Merri-bek City Council’s ‘A Climate for Change’ exhibition at the Counihan Gallery.

Artwork Statement
I created this piece in response to a memory and as a marking of time, of two lovers wrestling in a park under the Berlin summer sun. Two bodies playfully rolling on top of one another, limbs spewing over the picnic blanket and onto the green lawn. An open show of our affection, our pain, our queerness, our hurt, our sexuality, our joy. This memory encapsulates the beauty and the complexities of the relationships and lives we live as queer people.