Ratul Alam is an Australian-Bangladeshi artist and curator working across painting and works on paper. His practice is grounded in abstraction, with a focus on gesture, repetition, and the physicality of surface. Using synthetic polymer paint, graphite, oil pastel, coloured pencil, and mixed materials including sand and found elements he builds layered compositions that hold both immediacy and restraint.

His approach resists fixed systems. Each work develops through a process of testing, disruption, and adjustment, where control and accident remain in tension. Marks are repeated, interrupted, and reworked until the surface resolves with a sense of internal coherence rather than predetermined outcome.

Personal memory and lived experience inform the work, though rarely in direct or illustrative ways. Instead, they persist as underlying structures shaping rhythm, density, and spatial decisions within the painting.

Alam has exhibited in group and solo presentations across Sydney and regional New South Wales, with works held in private collections in Australia, Bangladesh, Germany, and the United States. He is a finalist in the City of Sydney Visual Identity for Refugee Week (2024), the Waverley Art Prize (2026) and the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2026).