FEATURED ARTIST

Video, photography and article produced by David Griffen.

For Justin Lees, art and racing are deeply intertwined. Growing up beside Newcastle Racecourse in Broadmeadow, with his father Max Lees a major figure in the racing industry and his brother Kris continuing the family tradition, the rhythms, colours and memories of the track have been part of his life from the beginning. Working across painting, photography and increasingly sculpture, Lees draws on this personal history to explore family, place and memory through a practice that moves freely between abstraction and figuration.

“We’re literally right on the track. I’ve got a gate that goes out into the tie-up stalls on race day.”

Justin Lees

For Justin Lees, the worlds of art, family and horse racing have always been closely connected, shaped by a childhood spent beside Newcastle Racecourse.

“I guess I do a bit of everything,” he says. “Paint, photograph, thinking about doing some sculpting. That’s next, I think.”

Lees studied design in Melbourne before returning to Newcastle, but one of the strongest threads running through his work comes from much earlier: growing up within Newcastle’s racing community and the influence of his father, renowned trainer Max Lees.

Racing was part of everyday life for the Lees family. Max began his career as a jockey before a fall in 1971 brought that chapter to an end. He moved into training and, during the 1970s, established himself as a significant figure in Australian racing.

For Justin, however, this history is more than racing folklore. It is family history, childhood memory and a landscape he has known for most of his life.

He recently moved back into the family home beside Newcastle Racecourse in Broadmeadow, where the stables that once stood behind the house are now gone, but the connection to the track remains immediate.

“We’re literally right on it. I’ve got a gate that goes out into the tie-up stalls on race day.”

As a child, the racecourse was effectively Lees’ backyard. He rode bikes and skateboards through the grounds with friends, explored the network of stables and dirt roads surrounding the track, and even learnt to drive there, sitting on his father’s knee as they travelled between the family stables and the racecourse.

“That was my playground.”

Those memories have increasingly entered his art.

A recent body of work developed around the twentieth anniversary of his father’s death began with loose, gestural abstraction before gradually moving towards more recognisable figures and imagery drawn from racing.

One painting referenced the 1971 accident that ended his father’s riding career. Elsewhere, Lees produced a group of ten jockey paintings, each wearing racing silks connected to significant moments in Max Lees’ career.

The colours operate almost like a family archive. Some represent horses connected to early victories, others important runners or milestones in his father’s career. Rather than simply documenting racing history, Lees uses these visual fragments as a way of returning to particular people, places and memories.

The result is work that sits somewhere between autobiography and abstraction.

Racing provides the imagery, but underneath it is something broader: a consideration of family, inheritance and the way personal histories become embedded in place.

For Lees, returning to Broadmeadow has meant returning physically to the landscape that shaped much of that history. The racecourse is once again just outside the gate, and the memories that once sat in the background have become increasingly central to the work.

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