Sorse Gallery presents Cheap Tricks by Eora/Sydney based artist Nina Radonja, a new collection of oversized scratchie tickets painted to mimic reality. They appear torn, dirty, creased, some already scratched, as if they’ve lived a life in someone’s pocket or glovebox. But they’re all losers. No prize to be found. Nothing to win here, at least not in the usual sense.

This series reflects on the theme of the loser, drawing inspiration from the ancient tale of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. In a contest to determine who was the greater artist, Zeuxis painted grapes so lifelike that birds flew down to peck at them. Confident in his victory, he went to view Parrhasius’s work, hidden behind a curtain. When he tried to draw the curtain aside, he discovered it wasn’t real - the curtain was the painting. Parrhasius had won. Zeuxis, the loser, fooled by a painted veil.

That moment when the surface betrays expectation is what interests me. By playing with both surface and symbol, I've tried to balance a double veil here. The first, the film that conceals the potential prize; second, the layer of trompe l’oeil - the rips, the creases, the soft glaze of shadow, even the imprint of a coffee ring, all rendered in paint.

By disrupting the image just enough to draw attention to the act of looking itself - the ticket becomes a decoy. A stand-in for expectation, disappointment, and the quiet spectacle of being fooled by a painting.