Millie Hopton - RMIT Award Winner

Self Portrait (Of Us)

14 - 25 January 2026

Opening night

16 January | 6 - 8pm

G4

Artist Statement

Self Portrait (Of Us): an exploration of complexities and contradictions within contemporary femininity. Through a materially sensitive and introspective approach, Hopton investigates the inherited rituals and quiet violence’s of gendered experience, drawing on personal history, feminist theory, and intergenerational storytelling. Much of her work is informed by the women who have shaped her life, particularly her late Nanna, and the tensions between tenderness and strength, visibility and suppression, care, and sacrifice. Using fibre-based materials, Hopton’s work navigates the complexities of contemporary womanhood, centring the domestic as both a physical space and a symbolic site of emotional endurance. Self Portrait (Of Us), is a deeply personal feminist inquiry into how women carry, conceal, and express their inner worlds – wrapping grief in red lipstick, ambition in quietness, rage in care. Through soft sculpture and installation, Hopton gives material form to the invisible burdens of womanhood, honouring both what is passed down and what must be let go.

Artist Biography

Originally from Kaurna Land (Adelaide) and now based in Naarm (Melbourne), Millie is an Australian artist who has recently graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) from RMIT University. Her practice is materially driven, and evolves rapidly through her ongoing exploration of surface, colour, texture, scale, and medium. Working across painting, soft sculpture and installation, Millie harnesses personal experiences, feminist theory, and auto-theory to examine contemporary girlhood, and the cultural aftermath of early-2000s pop culture and digital media. Hopton’s work is informed by the psychological impact of hypervisibility, self-surveillance, and the gendered performance of identity, shaped by online platforms and visual culture. Influenced by her immediate surroundings, social interactions and lived experiences, Millie seeks a form of realism that captures the emotional weight of mundane or intimate moments. Through expansive scale, tactile materials, and exaggerated forms, her work invites prolonged viewing and physical empathy, creating spaces where vulnerability, resistance, and critique can coexist. Hopton’s practice challenges dominant narratives of femininity, reclaims the body as a site to reassert autonomy, and to take up space.

Contact
Phone : (03) 9482 3550
mail@redgallery.com.au

Address
157 St Georges Rd
Fitzroy North, Victoria, 3068
Map

How to get here
Tram: Route 11
Stop 21 just north of Edinburgh Gardens

Melway Ref: 30B12
Parking in nearby streets

Bus: 504 (Reid Street)