Lucas Grogan for Tidal Wave: An Honest Diary in Miniature Form

Lucas Grogan's practice has always worked like an unguarded diary. In this conversation with Pieces of Eight, we explore how Lucas's creation for the Tidal Wave exhibition finds an unexpected new canvas: a set of baroque pearls, painted with a pair of lovers.

Grogan reflects on love not as something exclusively romantic, but as a quiet, ongoing choice to care for and accompany someone else through life, and how that idea found its way onto a surface small enough to be worn.

PO8: Your palette is famously restricted: blue and white, more recently green and white. Colour carries its own cultural and emotional weight in your practice. Was that a starting point for the pearl, or did the luminous surface of the baroque pearl ask something different of you?

LG: I think blue is an ever present, aspirational and deeply calming presence in our lives. Given the organic and irregular nature of the pearls, I initially wanted to use blues to create rockpool like forms on the pearl's surface. But the pearl’s luminous surface has a galactic nature that evoked a sense of destiny - thus I filled the rockpools with the Lovers of Valdaro.

PO8: Your work often carries text, phrases pulled from the personal, the political, and the absurd. Is there a word or phrase living inside these pearls, even if it's invisible?

LG: The text that runs across the pearls is 'True Love' - easy, simple, clear. But I like that when the pearls are switched they can also read 'Love True' - and that can be interpreted as living true in your relationship or to yourself.

PO8: You've described your practice as working like an honest, emotional diary that doesn't try to teach a lesson. What did you think about, or confess, when you sat down to paint something as small as a baroque pearl?

LG: When you’re deeply in love you get the sense that this is what we’re really here for - to care for, protect and accompany someone through life. You can’t be everything someone else needs in life, but you can be there through the hard times - and good times - if you choose to be. And that doesn’t have to be specifically romantic in nature - it could be familial, or as life-long friends.

Visit us in our Gallery at 28 Russell Place, Melbourne, to acquire this one-of-a-kind wearable artwork. Tidal Wave is showing until August 29, 2026.