The Stars Before Us All | Washington, D.C.

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The Stars Before Us All | Washington, D.C.

  • Artist
    Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Betty Chimney, Gaypalani Wanambi, Owen Yalandja, Timo Hogan, Rover Thomas, Rammey Ramsey, Nici Cumpston OAM, Charlie Tjapangati, Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra Yukuwa, Dr Christian Thompson AO, Garry Namponan, Lex Namponan, Maureen Ali, Jennifer Brown, Sylvia Marragawaidj, Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan, Leigh Namponan and Nancy Jackson.
  • Dates
    15 Oct—10 Nov 2025
  • Catalogue
    Download now
  • Gallery Location
    1717 K St NW Washington DC

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin is thrilled to present The Stars Before Us All: Australian First Nations Art – an expansive exhibition in Washington, D.C. that brings together new and collectible work by more than 20 luminaries of contemporary Australian First Nations art.

The Stars Before Us All is showing from October 15 to November 10 at Michael Reid Galleries’ temporary exhibition space at 1717 K St NW, Washington, D.C. (1000 Connecticut Ave NW building) in the U.S. capital’s downtown Golden Triangle district.

With a focus on living, practicing artists – whose extraordinary work continues cultural traditions on a continuum spanning 65,000 years – The Stars Before Us All echoes the work of the National Gallery of Victoria, whose concurrent exhibition, The Stars We Do Not See, begins its two-year North American tour at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Curated by Myles Russell-Cook, the NGV’s ambitious show is the largest presentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art ever staged outside Australia, representing a watershed moment for First Nations artists on the world stage. Michael Reid Galleries’ concurrent presentation, The Stars Before Us All, meets this moment with a dazzling and diverse collection of more than 30 works by many of the most important and acclaimed voices in Australian contemporary art.

The Stars Before Us All opens a window into an extraordinary contemporary art tradition,” says our founder and chairman, Michael Reid OAM. “It reveals a culture that, after millennia of relative isolation, has in the last two decades burst onto the global stage, offering audiences not only works of great aesthetic power but also a vision of art as continuity, survival, renewal and growth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art is not just Australia’s unique addition to the art world. It is among the world’s oldest, deepest, most original and ever-evolving art traditions.”

The Stars Before Us All marks a major milestone – not just for our gallery, but for Australian art more broadly,” says Michael Reid Galleries director Toby Meagher. “To present these extraordinary First Nations artists in Washington, D.C., alongside a landmark National Gallery of Victoria touring exhibition, underscores the growing global significance of Indigenous voices in contemporary art.”

The Stars Before Us All marks the United States debut for many of the show’s stars, including Yolŋu artist Gaypalani Wanambi, recipient of the $100,000 Telstra Art Award at this year’s Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA). Joining Wanambi are many of her fellow NATSIAA alumni, including Kuninjku artist Owen Yalandja; Pitjantjatjara artist Timo Hogan; and Ngan’gikurrungurr painter, master weaver and cultural leader Regina Pilawuk Wilson, who is visiting the United States for the occasion and was our the guest of honour at the show’s opening celebration.

For all enquiries, please email tobymeagher@michaelreid.com.au or hughholm@michaelreid.com.au

The Stars Before Us All | Eora/Sydney Edition

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The Stars Before Us All | Eora/Sydney Edition

  • Artist
    Betty Chimney & Raylene Walatinna, Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Emily Kam Knwarraye, Sylvia Marrgawaidj, Danie Mellor, Bardayal Lofty Nadjamerrek AO, Kathleen Petyarre, Jennifer Prudence, Josina Pumani, LeShaye Swan, George Tjampu Tjapaltjarri, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, Regina Pilawuk Wilson and Djirrirra Wununmurra Yukuwa
  • Dates
    9 Oct—2 Nov 2025
  • Catalogue
    Download now
  • Gallery Location
    Eora / Sydney

Michael Reid Sydney is delighted to present a specially curated companion exhibition to The Stars Before Us All – our upcoming exhibition of contemporary First Nations art in Washington, D.C. Ahead of our show’s opening in the US capital on Wednesday, 15 October, Michael Reid Sydney’s expansive presentation of The Stars Before Us All is now unfolding across the entire exhibition space at our flagship gallery in Chippendale and will continue concurrently with our stateside survey throughout October.

This significant group exhibition offers local collectors and gallery visitors the opportunity to experience and acquire extraordinary new and historical work by more than 15 luminaries of contemporary First Nations art at a watershed moment during which their practice is being celebrated on the international stage.

Reflecting the project’s international scope, the Eora/Sydney edition of The Stars Before Us All supports the gallery’s ambition to embed First Nations art within a globe-spanning network of collectors, curators and institutions, joining the cross-cultural dialogue forged by the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark touring exhibition The Stars We Do Not See, which will travel across North America over the next two years following its debut at The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Echoing the work of the NGV and the National Gallery of Art, The Stars Before Us All highlights practising First Nations artists and key historical works, offering a contemporary complement to the NGV’s sweeping institutional survey. The Eora/Sydney edition of The Stars Before Us All is anchored by a significant suite of historical works by Regina Pilawuk Wilson, who will travel to Washington, D.C. this month as the guest of honour at our opening celebration for The Stars Before Us All – the first occasion for her to visit the room named in her honour at the Australian Embassy to the United States.

Joining Wilson in the exhibition’s local contingent is Kuninjku artist Owen Yalandja, who was awarded the Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award at this year’s Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, as well as Yankunytjatjara artist and three-time Wynne Prize finalist Betty Chimney, Yolŋu artist Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra Yukuwa and many more. The exhibition also features a sublime painting by the late visionary Emily Kam Kngwarray, whose career-spanning retrospective is currently on view at the Tate Modern in London, and a work by the late Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori.

To discuss works from The Stars Before Us All, please email hughholm@michaelreid.com.au

Margaret Preston: A Collection of Important Prints

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Margaret Preston: A Collection of Important Prints

  • Artist
    Margaret Preston
  • Dates
    4 Oct—17 Dec 2025
  • Catalogue
    Download now
  • Gallery Location
    Eora / Sydney

From the time of her first exhibition in 1925 Margaret Preston established herself as the most important artist printmaker working in Australia. The exhibition received critical and popular acclaim. It was described in the press as ‘a riot of colour’ and sold exceptionally well. The most desirable works were those dealing with Australian flora; Preston hand-coloured them in gouache which enabled her to exploit the effects of vibrant, saturated colours. Her work quickly became iconic, being illustrated in journals like Art in Australia and The Home and being acquired by public galleries.  The exhibition also marked the beginning of Preston’s commitment to the development of a national Australian art.

This important group of eight prints span the most productive years of Preston’s involvement with woodblock printmaking – ranging from her 1925 exhibition until 1939.

In Native flowers (1925), an arrangement of flannel flowers, Sturt desert peas and Christmas bells in a blue bowl, the flowers have a jewel-like quality, appearing vibrant against the solid black background. This was one of the best-known prints from the 1925 exhibition following its reproduction on the cover of Art in Australia in December of that year.

Throughout the twenties Preston continued to experiment with still lives of native flowers, the compositions becoming bolder and more commanding. She also produced landscapes of the Sydney foreshore. When Preston settled in Sydney in 1920, she lived in the harbourside suburb of Mosman and went on to produce several prints which show her affection for this picturesque location. Mosman Bridge (1927), one such view, was selected by the artist to accompany her monograph Margaret Preston: Recent paintings 1929. All impressions of this print are slightly different. Preston was not interested in printing in colour, but hand coloured each print, the distribution of colour often varying, imparting each with its own vitality.

By the end of the decade Preston’s still life prints had become highly abstracted. Gum blossoms (1928) is one of the outstanding prints of this period, the artist carefully designing a floral arrangement with a pre-determined pictorial composition in mind. The subtly coloured round gum flowers and triangular leaves push out to the edges of the image, constrained by the rigid black lines that define the composition.    

In the early 1930s Preston moved to live in Berowra, a rural area surrounded by dense native bush. She was aged in her early sixties and was recovering from surgery. Prints produced by Preston after this time are all rare. Whereas in the early 1920s her editions usually numbered 50 or 25, later editions are small, numbering only two or three, and in many cases impressions are unique. This is the case with Old Banksia Tree (1939), one of Preston’s most important prints from her Berowra years. The tree was located at the bottom of her property, gnarled by age but still productive; Preston obviously identified with it (there is a photograph of her standing next to it).

In this impression, the woodcut is not hand-coloured, but the artist has introduced background tone that emphasises the isolation and vulnerability of the tree. Produced on the cusp of the Second World War it marked the end to Preston’s Berowra phase of her career.

Roger Butler AM

Emeritus Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

National Gallery of Australia

Provenance

Collection formed from the early 1990s; all woodcuts acquired from Josef Lebovic, Sydney.

Private collection, Sydney.


Price On Application

tobymeagher@michaelreid.com.au


Selected Collections that hold works by Margaret Preston

Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney)

Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide)

Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth)

Geelong Gallery (Geelong)

Holmes à Court Collection (private, WA)

Joseph Brown Collection (private, gifted to NGV, Melbourne)

National Gallery of Australia (Canberra)

National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne)

Newcastle Art Gallery (Newcastle)

New England Regional Art Museum — Howard Hinton Collection (Armidale)

Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane)

University of Western Australia — Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art (Perth)

Jim Naughten

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Jim Naughten

  • Artist
    Jim Naughten
  • Dates
    3—30 Nov 2025

Jim Naughten is a British artist whose work explores the complex and fragile relationship between humans and the natural world. Originally trained as a painter, he now works primarily with photography, digital manipulation, and, more recently, Artificial Intelligence.

Drawing from a deeply creative and classically trained foundation, Naughten champions new frontiers in photographic practice—where analogue traditions are extended through digital technologies and AI. His images—featuring surreal subjects such as pink zebras, neon gibbons, crested birds, and roving wolves—are vivid, unsettling, and dreamlike.

They explore the space between memory, imagination, and ecological anxiety. Through this lens, Naughten confronts the environmental crisis with unflinching directness, using the “shock of the new” to highlight the realities of biodiversity loss and climate change. His recent projects, Mesozoic (2023) and Biophilia (2025), reflect a growing urgency in his practice and a call to reconnect with the natural world.

Naughten’s works are meticulously constructed—painterly in their approach, layered and refined through time and digital technique. Influences range from the psychological portraits of Diane Arbus to the lush, documentary-style interventions of Richard Mosse and Patrick Waterhouse. He frequently collaborates with ecologists and conservationists, and has supported environmental initiatives including fundraising for the  Jane Goodall Institute.

His work is held in major public and private collections, including the Wellcome Collection, the Imperial War Museum, the Horniman Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida. Through striking imagery and cutting-edge visual storytelling, Jim Naughten urges us to remember the wonder and fragility of the natural world—and our shared responsibility to protect it.

 

Preview catalogues and early acquisitions are now available by request. Please email: dean@michaelreid.com.au

Artist Profile – William Yang

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To celebrate the announcement of Michael Reid Berlin’s representation of William Yang, we visited the Queensland-born photographer, performance artist and cultural trailblazer at his Eora/Sydney home, where he lives and works alongside his vast photographic archive spanning more than five decades.

Yang has been one of the most important and prolific chroniclers of Australian cultural life over the last 50 years, capturing the celebrated and the marginalised, the public and the radically personal with unwavering clarity, empathy and candour.

From his essential works of social documentary – lensed at the front lines of the parties, protests and performances through which LGBTQIA+ identity, autonomy and community came to be expressed and defined – to his intimate, diaristic portraits of family, friends and lovers, many of which were set against the ravages of the AIDS era, Yang has built an extraordinary body of work that today stands among the most significant social archives of the past half-century.

“William Yang is widely regarded as one of Australia’s most significant photographic storytellers, blending autobiography, social history and performance in a body of work that has helped redefine the nation’s visual narrative,” says Michael Reid OAM. “His work endures not only for its aesthetic and documentary power, but also for its gentle, unwavering commitment to truth-telling – across generations and cultures.”

Following the artist’s recent solo exhibition at Michael Reid Berlin, which brought together 14 key works from across his career, Yang’s permanent, ongoing representation in Europe offers further recognition of his work’s enduring resonance and global significance, while affirming our commitment to celebrating his practice on the international stage. Alongside this announcement, we are delighted to present a curated selection of iconic and indelible photographs once again drawn from across distinct stages of his career. Many are now in their final editions and are exclusively available to explore and acquire on the Michael Reid Berlin website or by request.

Propelled by his medium’s capacity for storytelling, Yang often inscribes and reanimates his photographs with handwritten recollections of encounters with his subjects, charting the ebb and flow of their relationships over time and offering intimate reflections on how each picture came to be. The sum of these stories is at once an urgent record of a vanishing queer and artistic underground and an ever-evolving statement of the artist’s subjectivity – expressed with an unvarnished immediacy that belies the quiet beauty and fleeting moments of grace in all the grit and glitter.

“A photograph captures a specific moment in time. You don’t have to do anything special to do this, it just happens, it’s part of the nature of photography,” Yang writes in the introduction to his 1997 book Friends of Dorothy. “Because it is the nature of the world to change and move onward, these moments can never be repeated. To take a photograph of an event as opposed to writing a document means that you have to be there.” Yang has always been there – bearing witness to the cultural, political and personal histories of the past half-century.

In recognition of his contribution to Australian visual culture and LGBTQIA+ visibility, Yang was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2021 – the same year that Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) staged his landmark retrospective Seeing and Being Seen, which traced his career from his exuberant early days documenting Sydney’s queer scene to his acclaimed bodies of work reflecting on cultural identity and family history.

“[My mother] thought being Chinese was a complete liability and wanted us to be more Australian than the Australians,” says Yang in an interview with QAGOMA. “So, the Chinese part of me was completely denied and unacknowledged until I was in my mid-30s and I became Taoist. It was through my engagement with Chinese philosophy that I embraced my Chinese heritage. People at the time called me Born Again Chinese, and that’s not a bad description, but now I see it as a liberation from racial suppression – I prefer to say I came out as a Chinese.”

“I would like my art to convey feelings, emotions, what it is like to be a sentient human: experiencing joy, laughter and sadness, to realise we are vulnerable, that we have our failings, we do bad things, but we are capable of forgiveness, kindness and love.”

WILLIAM YANG

“By combining photographs with words in his award-winning slide projection monologues, he expands on the context of his images and avoids the risk of cliché,” notes Michael Reid OAM. “Sadness (1992) recounts the grief his family felt after the 1922 murder of his uncle, paralleled with the loss experienced by the gay community during the AIDS crisis. These monologues have been presented at major festivals and venues in Australia, Europe, and North America, blending image, memory, and live narration to create a deeply affecting form of documentary theatre.”

Yang began 2025 with Milestone at the Sydney Festival – a performance marking his 80th birthday that drew on his vast archive of photographs and interwove them with personal reminiscence. Radiating his trademark warmth, humour and candour, Milestone was hailed by The Sydney Morning Herald as “a body of work that speaks a universal language, inviting us to forget about those differences that are only skin deep and reflect on the things that are truly important.” A creative triumph and deeply moving, Milestone set the tone for a year of milestones – from his solo exhibition at Michael Reid Berlin to the announcement of his ongoing European representation, establishing 2025 as a defining chapter in his brilliant career.

“Prior to our representation of William in Berlin, it had always been a not-so-secret thrill of mine to be photographed by William, while running about Sydney,” says Michael Reid OAM. “As this country’s foremost documentarian, the entire archive of William’s practice is heading to the State Library of New South Wales. Should William capture your photograph, you will live on for hundreds of years within a prestigious museum. William can make people almost live forever.”

The Children are Now

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The Children are Now

  • Artist
    Mai Nguyễn-Long
  • Dates
    25 Oct 2025—7 Feb 2026
  • Gallery Location
    Talbot Rice Gallery

In September Mai Nguyễn-Long embarks on her next art residency project, representing Australia in a star-studded line up of international artists in The Children Are Now at Talbot Rice Gallery, Scotland. Curated by James Clegg, The Children Are Now examines the potency of imagination, apartheid education, militaristic games and generational trauma. Mai Nguyễn-Long will make and exhibit new ceramic works via ceramic studio access at the University of Edinburgh, and will show alongside Francis Alÿs, Monster Chetwynd, Ane Hjort Guttu, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Bob and Roberta Smith and Adéla Součková.

The Children are Now is a group exhibition that aims to represent the relationship of children to the key challenges we face today. Through artworks that capture the potency of children’s playful imaginations, it makes reference to apartheid education, militaristic games and generational trauma, asking how history is made to repeat itself in the face of those who are capable of reimagining everything. In the context of Childism, a movement to expose and redress the prejudices in how children are understood, and in collaboration with Children’s Humans Rights Defender from the Children’s Parliament, it will empower the voices of children. Shifting the emphasis of the phrase “the Children are the Future” from being a description of the fact that children will become the next generation, it acknowledges that young people are here and now the most powerful world-builders among us.

Sydney Contemporary 2025: Masters of Photography

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Sydney Contemporary 2025: Masters of Photography

At Sydney Contemporary 2025, Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin presents a significant exhibition of new and historical works by several of Australia’s most important photographers.

Forming a core thread of the gallery’s most ambitious art fair presentation to date, Masters of Photography begins by drawing visitors into the distinct visual worlds of two of the country’s most acclaimed contemporary artists: Petrina Hicks, debuting the final four works from her award-winning Mnemosyne series exclusively at Sydney Contemporary; and Trent Parke, Australia’s first – and still only – Magnum-accredited photographer, unveiling previously unseen images from the landmark series that first brought him global acclaim more than two decades ago.

The watery currents of Hicks’s new work continue through a curated collection of photographs now in their final editions, including Narelle Autio’s cinematic surf scenes and Tamara Dean’s dreamlike undersea visions, as well as a very special offering of one of the most iconic images in the Australian photobook: Max Dupain’s Sunbaker (1937).

A rising voice in contemporary photography, Scott Perkins is exhibiting with Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin for the first time since the announcement of his representation by the gallery. Final editions of major works from the photographic archive of Dr Christian Thompson AO provide a historical counterpoint to Recital, his live vocal work headlining Performance Contemporary as part of the fair’s public program, while sun-splashed pastel portraits from the latest series by Gerwyn Davies, Calypso, similarly complement his newly commissioned, large-scale textile work, now positioned above the Carriageworks bar and dining space as a playful addition to the Installation Contemporary program.

To discuss works from our Masters of Photography exhibition at Sydney Contemporary, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

Sydney Contemporary 2025: Painting

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Sydney Contemporary 2025: Painting

This year’s Sydney Contemporary presentation from Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin brings together an exciting assembly of contemporary painters whose technical mastery, searching intelligence and conceptual daring carry art’s most storied medium into new and innovative terrain.

The exhibition marks the Sydney Contemporary debut of two major talents who both joined our stable of represented artists in April this year after previously gaining widespread attention as finalists in the National Emerging Art Prize. Naarm/Melbourne-based Indian Australian artist Sid Pattni, a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, arrives at the fair on the heels of his first solo exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney, The Act of Putting it Back Together, which was widely acclaimed and acquired in its entirety well before the opening. Pattni is joined by Eora/Sydney abstract painter Kathy Liu, who has emerged in recent years as one of the most admired and closely watched figures within the Michael Reid network and was recently announced as a finalist in the 2025 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award at Campbelltown Arts Centre.

Accompanying Pattni and Liu are two of the most impressive, distinctive interpreters of the Australian landscape working today. Celebrated West Australian artist Carly Le Cerf returns to Sydney Contemporary after a succession of major career triumphs and a creatively pivotal Blue Mountains residency, while Dyarubbin/Hawkesbury-based painter Julz Beresford presents her first full-scale series of monumental mountainscapes in a rotating exhibition unfolding over the course of the art fair.

Rounding out our contemporary painting survey are Meanjin/Brisbane-based still-life master John Honeywill and Muloobinba/Newcastle multidisciplinary artist Michelle Gearin, whose presence at Sydney Contemporary coincides with her latest solo exhibition, I’ll Be Your Mirror, at Michael Reid Sydney.

To discuss works from our contemporary painting survey, please email hughholm@michaelreid.com.au

Sydney Contemporary 2025: Sculpture

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Sydney Contemporary 2025: Sculpture

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin’s 2025 Sydney Contemporary presentation is grounded by a trio of significant installations by three of the country’s most exciting and important artists working in the field contemporary sculpture.

Dharawal/Bulli-based multidisciplinary artist, academic and storyteller Mai Nguyễn-Long makes her return to Sydney Contemporary following a pair of career-defining institutional projects: her monumental, room-sized sculptural installation The Vomit Girl Project, which was commissioned for the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and presented for seven months to international acclaim at QAGOMA, Meanjin/Brisbane; and her equally epic Doba Nation, which headlined the artistic program of this year’s Perth Festival. The artist’s newly completed collection of clay-formed figures debuts at Sydney Contemporary while she embarks on a prestigious two-month residency at Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh.

A pride of fabulous feline sculptures by Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Troy Emery slink, sashay and strike languorous poses in our Sydney Contemporary exhibition. Finished with silky, blush-pink tendrils and beadwork painstakingly threaded by hand, the artist’s new series dazzlingly distils his creative signatures, brought to life with a couturier’s skill and imaginative flourish. Emery’s Sydney Contemporary showing follows his most recent collaboration with French luxury house Hermès and the grand unveiling of his most ambitious commission to date, Guardian Lion – a sprawling, illuminated, kaleidoscopic sculptural landmark now soaring high above Melbourne’s Southbank.

One of the most important figures working in contemporary sculpture over the last three decades, Eora/Sydney-based artist Linde Ivimey is presenting her first new body of work with Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin since joining the gallery’s stable of represented artists in August. Working with reclaimed materials – bone, fabric, wax, metal, hair – Ivimey creates powerful figurative sculptures that are at once raw, tender and deeply personal.

To discuss works from our contemporary sculpture survey, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

Sydney Contemporary 2025: First Nations

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Sydney Contemporary 2025: First Nations

Offering a powerful opening statement for our most ambitious art fair presentation to date, the entry to the Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin booth is flanked by a trifecta of magnificent new works from three of the most accomplished and acclaimed voices in contemporary First Nations art practice: Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Gaypalani Wanambi and Betty Chimney.

Wanambi’s star turn at Sydney Contemporary closely follows the announcement of her triumph at this year’s Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), the most prestigious prize dedicated to First Nations art. Working at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land, the celebrated Yolŋu artist was awarded NATSIAA’s highest honour, the $100,000 Telstra Art Award, for her monumental, multi-panel work Burwu, blossom – a tessellating installation of reclaimed road signs dazzlingly reimagined with intricately etched depictions of the epic Ancestral journeys of Wuyal. Our 2025 Sydney Contemporary presentation is anchored by another composite etched-metal piece realised on the same breathtaking scale as her Telstra work.

Award-winning painter, master weaver and 2025 Sulman Prize finalist Regina Pilawuk Wilson returns to Sydney Contemporary with a series of epic, colour-soaked canvases whose rhythmic, reverberating linework offers a contemporary painterly interpretation of a weaving tradition spanning generations. Widely celebrated internationally and recognised as one of Australia’s pre-eminent contemporary Aboriginal artists, the senior Ngan’gikurrungurr artist and cultural leader is the cultural director of Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation and co-founder of the Peppimenarti community. She joins our presentation with a spectacular suite of paintings that echo the heft, intricacy and tonal depth of her Sulman-shortlisted work, Wupun (sun mat).

Yankunytjatjara artist and three-time Wynne Prize finalist Betty Chimney presents a new series concurrent with her solo exhibition Katjarunkanyi – Breaking Dawn at Michael Reid Sydney. A long-time artist and director of Iwantja Arts – the Indigenous-owned and -governed art centre in the rocky desert country of Indulkana on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands – Chimney is inspired by her ancestral Yankunytjatjara Country and her determination to maintain a strong connection to Country and culture.

The presence of Wanambi, Wilson and Chimney at Sydney Contemporary immediately precedes an exciting international foray, with all three artists set to star in Michael Reid’s forthcoming group show The Stars Before Us All in Washington, D.C. The exhibition opens next month in conversation with the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark exhibition The Stars We Do Not See at the National Gallery of Art.

To discuss available work by Gaypalani Wanambi, Regina Pilawuk Wilson and Betty Chimney, please email tobymeagher@michaelreid.com.au

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