Rituals of the Modern Middle Class
Rituals of the Modern Middle Class explores the absurdity woven into the daily habits and pastimes of Western middle-class life. Drawing on memories and cultural imagery from the 1970s to the 1990s, Heath Nock’s paintings transform familiar activities into strange, almost theatrical rituals.
Nock’s perspective is shaped by his own unusual background. Born into a Romani circus family, he spent his childhood travelling the showman’s circuit around Australia. Life on the move was marked by disruption and impermanence, in stark contrast to the ordered routines of the suburban middle class. This sense of being an outsider fostered a fascination with the rituals of others, which later became central to his artistic practice.
The works in this series are drawn from personal and found imagery, including advertising, family snapshots, and scenes of leisure. Cropping and reframing his sources, Nock isolates moments that hover between recognition and estrangement. His blurred brushwork resists the slickness of advertising, opening up space for ambiguity and reflection.
Recurring motifs highlight the ritualistic qualities of everyday acts. In Beach Smokers (Pink), cigarettes are less about habit than performance, evoking seduction, conversation, and coolness. Other paintings capture the codified gestures of baseball or the obsessive devotion of bodybuilding, revealing how sport and leisure take on the weight of ceremony. These rituals, Nock suggests, often circle back to consumerism and spectacle rather than to community or tradition.
Nostalgia plays a quiet but powerful role. Rather than longing for a past era, Nock uses memory as a way of looking back to understand the present, collaging fragments of the everyday into new narratives. Through these works, Nock asks viewers to reconsider the ordinary. Why do we attach such significance to the habits that fill our lives? What do they reveal about the culture we live in? By framing the familiar as absurd, he prompts both humour and unease, leaving us to question the meaning behind our own rituals.