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

Forming a core thread of the gallery’s most ambitious art fair presentation to date, Masters of Photography will take visitors inside the distinct visual worlds of two of the country’s most acclaimed contemporary artists: award-winning photographer Petrina Hicks, debuting a new and beguiling body of work exclusively at Sydney Contemporary; and Australia’s first and still only Magnum-accredited photographer, Trent Parke, 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 deep-sea visions, as well as a very special offering of one of the single most iconic and indelible images in the Australian photobook: Max Dupain’s Sunbaker from 1937.

A rising voice in contemporary photography, Scott Perkins will exhibit with Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin for the first time the announcement of his representation by the gallery. Final editions of essential works from the photographic archive of Dr Christian Thompson AO will provide a historical counterpoint to Recital, his live performance headlining Performance Contemporary, part of Sydney Contemporary’s public program.

To request a preview and secure priority access to works from our Masters of Photography exhibition, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

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 will mark 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, will exhibit 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 and heroic interpreters of the Australian landscape working in this country 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 will present 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 request a preview and secure priority access to works from our contemporary painting survey, please email hughholm@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin’s 2025 Sydney Contemporary presentation will be grounded by a trio of expansive sculptural installations by three of country’s most exciting and important artists working at the forefront of their field.

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 was presented for seven months to international acclaim at QAGOMA in Meanjin/Brisbane; and her equally epic assemblage 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 will slink, sashay and strike languorous poses on plinths and podiums 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 large-scale commission with French luxury house Hermès and the grand unveiling of his most ambitious project 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 will present 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 request a preview and secure priority access to new works from our contemporary sculpture survey, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

As a powerful opening statement for Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin’s most ambitious art fair installation to date, the entry to our exhibition will be flanked by a magnificent trio of new bodies of work by 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 exhibition will be anchored by another composite etched-metal piece realised on the same dazzling 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 on the international stage and recognised as Australia’s pre-eminent contemporary female Aboriginal artist, 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 Sydney Contemporary exhibition 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 will present a new series of paintings concurrent with her latest 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 Anangu 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 exhibition The Stars Before Us All in Washington, D.C. – opening this October in conversation with the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark exhibition The Stars We Do Not See at the National Gallery of Art.

To request a preview and secure priority access to new works by Gaypalani Wanambi, Regina Pilawuk Wilson and Betty Chimney, please email tobymeagher@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin returns to Carriageworks this September with our most ambitious art fair installation to date, presenting extraordinary new and collectable works by more than 20 leading Australian contemporary artists.

All works from our Sydney Contemporary 2025 exhibition – an expansive survey spanning painting, photography, sculpture, installation and more.

To receive an exhibition catalogue and sign up for first access, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au