About
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Dr Hayley Megan French is an artist, curator and writer based in Parramatta on Darug Country.
Her practice spans painting, writing and curatorial projects, and is grounded in sustained attention to place, home and the everyday structures through which we understand where we live.
French’s recent work explores the visual and spatial language of home, drawing on domestic architecture, pattern and lived experience. Her ongoing series Patterns for a Home extends her longstanding use of pattern as a way of locating herself in place, turning from the landscape towards the more intimate experience of home. Gathered through looking, living and moving through everyday space, these patterns are both found and made—in surfaces and structures, but also in routines, thought, care and the shared rhythms of living with others.
In 2026, French received the Allan Gamble Award at the Mosman Art Prize for Patterns for a Home (Some Thoughts I Couldn’t Put Down). Her work has been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at Penrith Regional Gallery, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and The Condensery, and she has undertaken artist residencies including at Bundanon and Parramatta Artists Studios.
French completed a PhD in Contemporary Australian Painting at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, in 2015. Her research received the 2015 CHASS Australia Prize for a Student from the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Her writing has been published across contemporary art journals, exhibition catalogues and artist publications, with a particular interest in painting, place and the social dimensions of art.
Alongside her studio practice, French has worked extensively as a curator and in arts and cultural development, including with Parramatta Artists Studios and the City of Parramatta. She currently serves as a Councillor for the City of Parramatta. These different strands of her work share an ongoing interest in how places are made, experienced and understood, and in the role art and culture can play in shaping a sense of belonging.
Photos from top to bottom: Courtesy BresicWhitney, Photo by Justin Nacua (crop), Photo by Justin Nacua (crop), Courtesy BresicWhitney