This September, Michael Reid Sydney will present our second solo exhibition from Muloobinba/Newcastle-based interdisciplinary artist Michelle Gearin since she joined our stable of represented artists in early 2023. Returning to the gallery for the first time in more than two years, Gearin will present a sequence of large-scale paintings that mark an exciting new chapter in her evolving practice.

Gearin’s work invites the viewer to move beyond the material world into a lucid, otherworldly dimension. Her distinctive visual language draws from a deeply personal lexicon of references: from Shunga and Sanskrit Kama Sutra miniatures to 19th-century Symbolism. These influences converge with autobiography – fragments of memory, desire and transformation – resulting in paintings that are both intimate and elemental, charged with a kind of noirish eroticism, shapeshifting magic and mythic ambiguity.

Since her widely acclaimed 2023 solo exhibition Lux Aeterna, Gearin has exhibited extensively in institutional group shows, including Old Stories, New Magic at Maitland Regional Art Gallery, where her spellbinding, wall-sized installation was anchored by her most ambitious work to date: Metamorphosis. Her work has since been acquired by the Art Gallery of Ballarat for its permanent collection, underscoring the growing momentum surrounding her practice and its growing resonance with both private collectors and public institutions.

Before joining Michael Reid, Gearin’s work was featured in several notable exhibitions, including Female Drivers (Maitland Regional Art Gallery, 2022), where her multi-panel work Prism – comprising 49 circular paintings – was acquired by the gallery. That same year, she exhibited alongside Alex Seton at The Lock-Up in Newcastle, presenting the multimedia installation Double Rainbow, which explored the science of optics and the perceptual mystery of the human eye.

To request a preview and gain priority access to works from Michelle Gearin’s forthcoming solo exhibition, please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au.

Michael Reid Sydney is delighted to present our first exhibition from Naarm/Melbourne-based Indian-Australian artist Sid Pattni, who joined our stable of represented artists earlier this year and is currently a finalist in the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Titled The Act of Putting It Back Together, Pattni’s solo exhibition debut will be celebrated with an opening event on Thursday, 31 July, 6–8pm.

Pattni first captured the attention of our chairman and director, Michael Reid OAM, when his work was shortlisted for the National Emerging Art Prize in 2024. “His paintings made me go wow,” says Michael. “But what elevated Pattni for me was his compelling exploration of Indian-Anglo colonisation and immigration to Australia – then and now.”

Born in London and raised in Kenya before moving to Melbourne via Boorloo/Perth, Pattni says he first approached painting as a way to process the dissonance he felt navigating multiple cultural identities.​​​​ “I’m interested in how aesthetics shaped under empire can be reclaimed and reconfigured to tell new stories about migration, memory, and identity,” says the artist, whose work borrows and remixes elements from Mughal miniature paintings, Indian textiles, British botanical drawings and 19th-century Company Paintings.

“I return to themes of hybridity, belonging and erasure, referencing historical visual formats not as homage, but as a means of critique and reimagining.” Speaking with Belle magazine for a recent profile, the artist describes his latest series as a continuation of his engagement with colonial visual traditions.

“The floral borders, inspired by British botanical illustrations, are no longer literal – they’re invented, composite, almost dreamlike. They symbolise how cultural artefacts were appropriated and recontextualised during empire, and how these reinterpretations continue to influence diasporic self-perception. What feels new in this body of work is a deeper emotional intensity.” The Act of Putting It Back Together is a response to inherited ways of seeing and an invitation to look again – “more critically,” says Pattni.

For information and acquisition opportunities please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

While Regina Pilawuk Wilson’s monumental work Wupun (sun mat) remains on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as a spectacular centrepiece of this year’s Sulman Prize, we are thrilled to announce that the senior Ngan’gikurrungurr artist and cultural leader has now completed a new collection of equally epic, colour-soaked canvases that will soon be on view in her next major solo show at Michael Reid Sydney.

Works from Wilson’s forthcoming exhibition have now arrived at our Eora/Sydney gallery, where they can be previewed in person or digitally by request. Please sign up to be the first to receive exclusive previews and priority access to Wilson’s extraordinary new paintings before her show’s official opening in early July.

Born in 1948 near Daly River, Northern Territory, Wilson is the cultural director of Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation and co-founder of the Peppimenarti community. Situated amid wetlands and floodplains at the centre of the Daly River Aboriginal Reserve, Peppimenarti is an important site for Ngan’gikurrungurr people and continues to inform Wilson’s art and weaving practices.

Realised on a truly spectacular scale, Wilson’s Sulman piece depicts wupun (sun mat), which are traditionally woven with yerrgi (pandanus) and merrepen (sand palm) for decorative use by the women of Peppimenarti.

Since winning the highest honour at the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Wilson has been a fixture on the contemporary art map. Her rhythmic, intricately detailed works are beloved globally and held in the collections of the British Museum, AGNSW, the NGV and QAGOMA. She has exhibited at LACMA in Los Angeles, the Moscow Biennale, the National Museum of the Arts in Washington, D.C. and numerous other important institutions across the globe.

For first access to works from the artist’s upcoming show, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Sydney is delighted to present the latest solo exhibition from award-winning Dharawal/Wollongong-based contemporary painter India Mark. Titled A View With a View, this sublime collection of intimately scaled, exquisitely composed and tonally rich still-life paintings is now showing in our upstairs exhibition space and will be welcomed with an opening celebration on Thursday, 19 June, 6–8pm.

“The beauty of painting still life is that there are endless possibilities, even when your subject material is limited,” says the artist, who cites 20th-century still-life maestro Giorgio Morandi among her enduring creative influences. Like Morandi, Mark delights in returning to simple and familiar objects, treating these repetitions as a chance to look closer – to hone in on nuanced details and subtle variations in light and colour. “There are certain objects in this series that I have painted many times; I will never tire of painting them.”

This project of refinement through close observation and a return to familiar forms was the animating force of Mark’s new series, coupled with the influence of A Dictionary of Colour Combinations by 20th-century Japanese artist, teacher and kimono designer Sanzo Wada. “This series has been a way of returning to aspects of still life I have explored before and really loved; the objects, colours and compositions are all things I intentionally wanted to revisit.”

Since her solo debut, Night Music, which followed the announcement of her representation by Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin, Mark has continued to amass a passionate following with a succession of accolades and group showings such as Light & Life at Tweed Regional Gallery and Tender at Ngununggula. She has been a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and the Portia Geach Memorial Award, and is the recipient of the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize and The Lester Prize (Emerging).

Alongside her studio practice, Mark also lectures in observational drawing and painting at the University of Wollongong. “[This] has allowed me to strip my understanding of painting back to the essentials,” she says. “It’s helped me to be more spontaneous with my own painting. I’ve become more comfortable with experimentation.”

Now, the creative breakthrough sparked by these recent experiences has culminated with A View With a View – a series Mark sees as a homecoming of sorts, albeit with the renewed confidence of an artist whose practice is going from strength to strength.

“I used to work on pairs of paintings simultaneously. Painting two works was a great way of creating nice conversations between the works,” says the artist. “For some reason, I stopped working this way for a while, and I missed those dialogues and connections between separate paintings. For this show, I decided to only work this way, painting pairs and trios of paintings that related directly to each other.”

Mark notes that two favourites from her series – both featuring glass surfaces – are works that at first posed challenges before leading to a shift in her point of view. “The way I paint glass is quite awkward; it’s not my strength in painting, and I think I love these particular works because I actually like the awkwardness of the glass objects,” she explains. “Awkwardness is a funny and persistent element of painting that I used to try to avoid. Now I have an affection for it.”

To discuss works from A View With a View by India Mark, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Sydney is continuing our Masters of Australian Photography series with a new exhibition centred on one of the single most iconic and indelible images in the Australian photobook: Max Dupain’s Sunbaker.

Showcasing masterful storytelling through the work of the 20th century’s greatest visual innovators, Masters of Australian Photography is now presenting a rare edition of Dupain’s elegant, enduring, totemic image from 1937, drawn from an important private collection and available to view and acquire below.

“Max Dupain’s Sunbaker is Australia’s best-known photograph,” note the curators at the NGV, where, as with all of this country’s most important institutions, the work is enshrined in the museum’s permanent collection. “Following the depletions of wartime, sunlight had a special meaning as an elemental force capable of promoting physical and spiritual wellbeing. The artist positioned his camera almost at ground level to emphasise the sunbaker’s domination of his environment and his almost palpable connection with the replenishing forces of nature.”

“Sunbaker represents the shifts in Dupain’s practice from private snapshot to public domain, from ardent modernist experimentation to determined recording of actuality and form,” note the curators at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where the work is also held in the permanent collection. “Within this image is Dupain’s pervasive interest in the individual body as a metaphor for social wellbeing and an exemplar of pure form.”

Flanked by rare editions of other essential works from Dupain’s photographic archive, Sunbaker is now showing in the upstairs exhibition space at Michael Reid Sydney.

For enquiries, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

Betty Chimney was born in Port Augusta and grew up in Coober Pedy before coming to live in Indulkana as a young girl. A long-time artist and director of Iwantja Arts, where she works at the forefront of the Indigenous-owned and -governed art centre’s innovative and exuberant new movement in First Nations art, Chimney draws inspiration for her work from her ancestral Yankunytjatjara country and a determination to maintain her strong connection to Country and culture.

Iwantja is the name of a creek where the Indulkana Community was established, running from high up in the rocky ridge all the way down to the community. There is a tjukitji (soakage) there, and different tjukula (rock-holes), too – both important water sources for Aṉangu people before there were bores or water tanks. There is also a very special site: a specific tree that holds the Tjurki (native owl) Tjukurpa. Indulkana artists’ paintings include all these sites, and their colours and marks reflect the way the landscape changes from the rocky ridge to the sandy creek beds.

In addition to her own painting practice, Chimney also works on large-scale collaborative paintings with her daughter, Raylene Walatinna, continuing a tradition of older women passing on their important knowledge of Tjukurpa (Aṉangu cultural stories) and Ngura (Country) to younger women.

A three-time Wynne Prize finalist, Chimney will present her next solo exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney in September, coinciding with her showing in this year’s Sydney Contemporary art fair.

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

Michael Reid Sydney is delighted to present Florescence: The Flowering, an expansive exhibition of spectacular new work by Gaypalani Wanambi and Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra Yukuwa, two leading Yolŋu artists working at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land.

Launching alongside Yolŋu Power at the Art Gallery of New South Wales – which charts the world-significant artistic flowering that has emerged from Yirrkala from the 1940s to the present – Florescence offers a contemporary complement to AGNSW’s sweeping historical display by centring the perspectives of two extraordinary talents at the forefront of an exciting new generation of Yolŋu artists.

Both Wanambi and Wunuŋmurra share the essence of their Country through their art. Their designs are structured in ways akin to a flower that grows from the body of a plant, at once highly decorative and expressive of identities embedded in place. Each land flowers in a different way. In Florescence, Wunuŋmurra’s intricate bark paintings and Wanambi’s shimmering etched metal works circle a towering forest of the two artists’ ḻarrakitj.

Florescence is Wanambi’s first large-scale release of new work since she was awarded the prestigious Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize and comes soon after the announcement of her shortlisting in the upcoming Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. “Her works are intricate and iridescent, like a piece of fine jewellery, and reveal the hand of a staggering talent,” notes a Vogue story published in the lead-up to Wanambi’s showing in Yolŋu Power at AGNSW.

Florescence arrives at a moment of burgeoning critical attention and institutional recognition for Yirrkala artists on the international stage. In addition to Yolŋu Power, it coincides with the grand opening of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spectacularly reimagined Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, as well as the landmark exhibition 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art at The Potter Museum of Art.

While carrying on the creative legacies of their forebears, Wanambi and Wunuŋmurra have extended their practice beyond classical, sacred designs to grow into their own informal interpretation of their homeland. The land has blossomed in a new way. Florescence will be welcomed with an opening celebration on Thursday, 19 June, 6–8pm. Together with several of their peers from the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, both artists will be present for this very special occasion.

To RSVP to our public celebration or enquire about available work, please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au

We are delighted to announce that the next presentation in Michael Reid Sydney’s upstairs exhibition space will be a homecoming of sorts for Mai Nguyễn-Long. After an impressive trifecta of large-scale offsite projects – at QAGOMA, John Curtin Gallery and Michael Reid Murrurundi – the multidisciplinary artist will return to our Eora/Sydney gallery in May for her first solo show since her 2023 debut.

Works from Nguyễn-Long’s self-titled solo exhibition – her second at Michael Reid Sydney since joining our stable of represented artists – will be available to preview and acquire by request in the lead-up to our opening celebration on Thursday, 15 May. This installation will include a suite of the artist’s Vomit Girl sculptures from her monumental assemblage Doba Nation, which debuted at John Curtin Gallery as the centrepiece of this year’s Perth Festival program.

Nguyễn-Long’s Vomit Girl figures first emerged through her artistic and scholarly practice from a feeling of voicelessness. “The recurring motif came from a sense of being erased: having no identity, language, or voice to speak with,” says the artist, whose practice lends expressive form to ineffable aspects of diasporic experience, materialising her attempt to mend what feels irreparably broken.

Reflecting on the messy edges of history, family and cultural identity, these Vomit Girl figures draw together like a sprawling archipelago, appearing playful yet resilient as they engage in their imaginary conversations. Nguyễn-Long’s Michael Reid Sydney installation will be on view concurrently with her sprawling, room-sized commission for the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, The Vomit Girl Project, which now has an extended run at QAGOMA until Sunday, 13 July.

“Among the works that merit – and reward – prolonged viewing [is] Mai Nguyễn-Long’s ceramic arrangement, The Vomit Girl Project,” writes Sophia Cai in her Freize magazine review of APT11. “Nguyễn-Long’s array of uncanny hand-built ceramics referencing Vietnamese mythology elicits totemic interpretations, blending contemporary body horror with questions of cultural identity.”

To request a preview and priority access to sculptures from Mai Nguyễn-Long’s forthcoming solo show at Michael Reid Sydney, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

“A cloying cocktail, a Coolangatta motor inn, the sweetest mangoes, syncopated steel drums piped out across a pool deck,” says Eora/Sydney-based contemporary artist Gerwyn Davies, setting a languorous scene as he lists the namesakes of his upcoming series, Calypso. “The term is used to name a variety of things, each summoning the swelter and sweat of Summer.”

Fashioning wild costumes with found objects and fabulously gaudy materials, Davies works at the nexus of performance, photo media and soft sculptural assemblage to construct personae poised between real and ersatz. These adventures in magnificent excess upend our expectations of a photo portrait – that it must reveal some essential truth about its subject. Instead, the self is slippery and unstable: a conga line of pop-cultural archetypes, visual puns, queer iconography and contorted, abstracted figures set against uncanny, sun-kissed spaces brought to life with hyperbolic, cinematic style.

In Calypso, these elements conjure a world of Australian tropical kitsch – one not too far removed from the parochial torpor of Porpoise Spit, albeit queered and reimagined with warm nostalgia and knowing camp.

For further information regarding works from Calypso by Gerwyn Davies, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au