Gay Visual Artist Venn Miles Drops Erotic Solo Exhibition

Sydney painter and Sniffies heartthrob Venn Miles is opening his third solo-exhibition this Saturday. The body of work, entitled “Act Out, Desire Me”, explores how a lubed, naked body might be far more slippery in our minds, and asks whether our memories, warped by lust, imagination, forgetfulness, and time, might record a history far more pertinent than what actually occurred.

“This one is very erotic; it’s sort of like a sexual diary,” Miles told Star Observer, “which is very typical ‘gay guy painter’. Of course that makes it fun and sexy, but it’s also a memoir, and because of that, it’s very focused on memory as a concept, the shifting and the fading and the changing and the unreliability of memory.”

The paintings, largely oil and charcoal on linen, depict nebulous humanoid figures, distorted yet erotic. “I find that the amorphousness of my work is how I show movement in a still image,” Miles explained, befitting the idea that memories are constantly shifting.

While realism aficionados might take offense at Miles’ uniquely abstract style, he cautions viewers not to expect to see “real bodies”. “They’re not representative,” Miles said. “They’re representative of memories, in that they are wrong, and that they’re not how anything looks.

“I like that memories are made up. I like that it’s all wrong. I think it’s interesting and funny, like when you try to recount a memory and someone else is like ‘that’s not what happened’, you know, I think that’s funny. It’s more interesting to me than what actually happened.”

When asked to pick a favourite painting, Miles cautiously pointed to ‘Saying the Same Thing Twice, Three Times’, a 122 × 153cm oil and charcoal on linen. While apparently painters, like parents, are not supposed to have favourites, Miles reflected on how the piece captures an inner-conflict that troubles so many creatives.

“I think something a lot of artists struggle with is not saying the same thing twice, but to still create work that is stylistically theirs constantly. So it’s finding this balance between having an identifiable style, but not recreating the same work.”

“I think that happens in sex too. In a relationship – and its not a bad thing – you do have the same sex over and over again. And it’s good sex, it’s the sex you’ve come to know and love, but you are saying the same thing twice, three times.”

“The words became more about consuming someone”

The exhibition is not Miles’ first to choose sex as a subject. “Just Eat the Skin”, Miles’ 2025 solo exhibition with Oigåll Projects, examined the intense volatility of desire.

“‘Just eat the skin’ was actually just a throw-away line about kiwi fruit,” Miles explained. “My [now partner] Izaak was saying he doesn’t like eating them because you need tools, and I was like, ‘just eat the skin’.

“But in a more poetic sense, the words became more about consuming someone. Holding them inside you, having that warmth in your belly like you do after eating. Having a person give you that same feeling.”

When asked if Miles hopes his artwork inspires others to ‘consume’, the Sniffies Ambassador was quick to reply. “I hope it does!” Miles said, his voice equal parts passion and sincerity. “I want people to be fucking. I think it’s good for people! And until it’s something that’s universally accepted, I think it’s going to be an interesting thing to make art about.”

While the flourishing artist has done just that, the current exhibition marking his second solo show with HAKE, many will be surprised by his humble beginnings. 

“My dad was really into drawing growing up,” Miles said, “and I always found it really impressive that he could draw, and I would always get him to draw me things that I liked, and I just thought it was so cool that he could imagine something and just…put it on a page. I was always really enamoured by that. So he taught me.”

Despite spending his teenage years with a graphite pencil in hand, Miles never imagined his love of art becoming anything more than a hobby. In fact, as a teenager, he didn’t care for painting at all.

“I think I’d convinced myself that I couldn’t paint,” Miles recounted, “or that I wasn’t good at painting. And so I just never did. I always just stuck to graphite on paper, and that was kind of it.” 

It wasn’t until one of those miraculous ‘fuck it’ Covid moments that Miles decided to swap his pencil for a brush. 

“I had this old box of oil paints that my grandmother gave me, and I just kind of went for it. I’d never painted anything in oils. I’d played around with acrylic in high school, but I was never very good. But with oils, I was really impressed by the way they moved. I really liked how malleable they were. You just didn’t get that with acrylic.” 

That said, Miles’ self-taught dalliance with oil paint was not without its tribulations. “I think I definitely misunderstood when people said that they were slow-drying,” Miles grinned.  “Like, I thought they meant a couple of hours. I didn’t realise it was days at a time.”

With each oil experiment, Miles began sharing his work on Instagram. “The stakes were so low,” Miles explained, “because I had no intention of becoming an artist.” But soon, followers became patrons, and it was those fans that decided Vinn Miles was an artist, long before he did. 

Vinn Miles’ exhibition opens this Saturday, the 11th April, at HAKE, HOUSE OF ART in Dee Why. The exhibition is open to the public from 1-3pm, and the exhibited works are purchasable on the day or online via the official catalogue. Miles is contactable via his Instagram, @vennmiles.