Jelena Telecki is a Sydney-based artist known for paintings and sculptures that address human relationships – including of power and dominance – and uniquely merge the real and the imagined. Often portraying partly concealed figures and fragmentary, dreamlike moments, her works are rich in intrigue, with flashes of levity and humour. Mothers, Fathers is Telecki’s first solo presentation at a major Australian art museum and the first in the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ new Contemporary Projects series. It features a suite of paintings developed for the Art Gallery that examine history and its grasp on narratives both personal and collective. For Telecki, this is a history tethered to psychic states best described by the Serbian word nespokojstvo, meaning ‘foreboding uneasiness’. This is intimated through ideas of family and chosen kin, with works depicting parents, progeny and Yugoslav Partisans. Their presence lingers in haunting yet playful scenes that obliquely recall the artist’s connection to her region of origin, the Balkans. Although bearing residual markers of a specific place and time, this series honours moments of sacrifice, vulnerability and intimacy that ultimately speak to universally shared experiences. Telecki entwines the profound and absurd, past and present, legacy and omen in ways that reimagine reality as we know it. Jelena Telecki Mushrooms 2 2021, Art Gallery of New South Wales © Jelena Telecki