Artist Victoria Reichelt’s latest exhibition is filled with messages from magazines of the past in her hyper-realistic oil paintings – and timely warnings for the future.

Aptly named Predictive Text, her new body of work grapples with current events and climate change through her renditions of real headlines and covers from vintage National Geographic, LIFE and Time magazines.

The topical series combines industrial imagery drawn from these publications alongside powerful questions like ‘Will We Mend Our Earth?’ and ‘The Human Race Has, Maybe, Thirty-Five Years Left’ that are just as timely as they were decades ago. The exhibition has been in the works for a few years, with Victoria sourcing all the magazines (reaching as far back as 1944) from eBay, secondhand bookstores and magazine dealers, before she transformed them into lifelike artworks.

‘We know their calls to action on issues like climate change and pollution went largely unheeded, as we continue to grapple with the same issues today,’ Victoria explains.

The Australian artist has been painting from photos of books and magazines for more than a decade, and her latest pieces are equal parts menacing and beautiful.

See Predictive Text at Melbourne gallery This Is No Fantasy from November 10 – 26. View the full catalogue here.

This Is No Fantasy
108-110 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy