Behind the Up and Over – by Perry Westwood, is a retrospective spanning ten years of work produced in a small up and over garage workshop in Waverley, Sydney. The exhibition offers an insight into the evolution of Perry's practice, bringing together a body of previously unseen sculpture, photomontage, entomology, and kinetic forms. Across these works, human, plant, animal, and fungal elements are fused into hybrid forms that resist easy classification. Perry's work operates in a charged space between whimsy and threat. Familiar, playful motifs are set against darker undercurrents, creating an uneasy symbiosis where beauty and the grotesque coexist. This tension invites viewers to linger in a space of discomfort, where attraction and repulsion are held in delicate balance.

The works At Home 1 and At Home 2 directly address a conflicted relationship with the artist's father remembered as both humorous and heroic, yet unpredictably volatile and violent. The playful nature of the underlit translucent boots, positioned against imposing backdrops of boiling oil and shattered glass, recall the volatility of the artists childhood home. Other works in the exhibition are less overtly narrative, however they evoke a similar layered emotional response, pairing the reassurance of the familiar with an underlying sense of unease.

Perry Westwood was born in London and has called Sydney home since 2000. After a career directing television commercials, he now pursues a more personal creative practice. Ideas take shape through hands-on experimentation, alongside life with his wife, four children and Smudger the Bull Terrier.