New York based painter Isca Greenfield-Sanders will return to Michael Reid Sydney to present her third solo exhibition in 2025. Greenfield-Sanders’ photographically informed watercolour and oil paintings exemplify technical methods of astounding precision, represented by collections such as Solomon R. Guggenheim collection, The Brooklyn Museum collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

To register for pre-exhibition information please contact danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Sydney is delighted to present a spectacular exhibition of sweeping and sublime landscapes by celebrated West Australian painter Carly Le Cerf. Titled Wayfinding: A Painter’s Path, this new series is a towering achievement from Le Cerf and will be celebrated with an opening reception at the gallery on Thursday, 31 July, 6–8pm.

“The original idea was simple,” says Le Cerf, discussing the making of her Wayfinding series for what is her first Eora/Sydney solo show in more than two years. “Create pieces so immersive that when you stand in front of them, your whole body is held by the land – no sky, just earth – inviting a full-body experience. What I didn’t anticipate was just how much these works would ask of me in return.” Pushing horizon lines to the very edge of the canvas, the vast topographical paintings of Wayfinding envelop the viewer in the red centre’s tones and textures, emotional resonance and elemental heft.

“Le Cerf’s intention is to express awe – that powerful and universal emotion,” writes art adviser Sarah Hetherington in the exhibition catalogue. “To be overwhelmed with feelings of reverence, admiration, even fear, in response to that which is grand, sublime and powerful.” Wayfinding is the ultimate expression of this soulful intensity – an outback odyssey that charts not only landforms traversed but interior routes forged through experience and intuition.

The force of Le Cerf’s work lies partly in her masterful approach to materiality, managing to zoom out to the vast sweep of the landscape while zeroing in on its granular details. “The process of layering and excavation is central,” says the artist. “It is an ongoing negotiation between what is concealed and what is exposed – a push and pull between opacity and translucency, grit and sheen, density and light. The result is a surface that feels alive: a shifting interplay of materials that rewards close, sustained looking.”

Wayfinding: A Painter’s Path is a major accomplishment from one of the great epic poets of the Australian landscape – one who continues to beat her own singular track across the contemporary art field. To discuss works from the series, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

A magnificent series of new paintings by senior Yankunytjatjara artist Betty Chimney will be on view in September at Michael Reid Sydney. A three-time AGNSW Wynne Prize finalist, Chimney is at the forefront of the innovative, exuberant, globally acclaimed new wave of First Nations painters working at Iwantja Arts.

To discuss priority access to paintings in this exhibition please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au

Paintings by Australia’s most senior female contemporary First Nations artist, Regina Pilawuk Wilson will grace the Sydney Gallery in 2025. A senior Ngan’gikurrungurr artist, NATSIAA winner and cultural director of Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation, Wilson is internationally celebrated, collected and is represented by important institutional collections across the world.

To discuss priority access to paintings in this exhibition please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au

Scott Perkins returns to Michael Reid Sydney in April 2025 with a new series of expertly crafted photographs and light boxes. Located within photography and sculpture disciplines, Perkins’s treatment of the photographic medium is precisely engineered and highly original.

Presented in three distinct modes, his images of unidentified landscapes have been captured in a state of balance, occupying a space between light and dark. Brooding, atmospheric and technically imposing, Perkins’s images are a dynamic viewing experience.

In this exhibition, viewers will be treated to impeccably presented light-box photographs of bespoke design that transform their surrounding spaces. The artist’s use of Hanhnemule metallic paper add a complementary lustre to the surface of his mysterious still photographic images.

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

The next presentation in the upstairs gallery at Michael Reid Sydney will be our first solo exhibition from Eora/Sydney-based painter Kathy Liu, who previously dazzled audiences as one of the stars of our annual survey show Painting Now.

“My approach is highly intuitive,” says Liu, speaking with Belle magazine for a profile published in the lead-up to Painting Now. “I begin a painting without a pre-set concept, letting the colours and shapes emerge. Sometimes, it feels like I’m there to help the artworks find their own storylines.”

This open-ended process makes the canvas a conduit for fabulous adventures through imaginative worlds, inviting delightfully unexpected turns as amorphous pools begin to coalesce and playfully enigmatic, inchoate figures appear through diaphanous wafts of colour.

“It reflects my subconscious mind, bringing up narratives from my past life that I have almost forgotten,” says Liu. “Lost memories of childhood, my love of mythology, some distant lines of poetry, all of these are unburied through my work.” Like hazy memories or half-remembered dreams, the resulting works feel alive with emotion, poeticism, a sense of magic and effervescent movement.

From a smattering of stars and harlequin prints to crescent moons and cuddly creatures, figurative elements bubble up through ethereal, overlapping layers, recalling a sense of childlike innocence and unfettered imagination. But, as with the circus paintings of Chagall and Picasso – both cited by the artist as influences – there could be a tinge of melancholy or menace inside these dreamy scenes.

The ephemerality of childhood amusements is echoed by a gossamer quality that sees fragmentary images on the cusp of emerging or just fading away – an ambiguity that rhymes with Liu’s fluid approach and the serendipitous possibilities of her abstract practice.

After her celebrated showing in a stellar run of group exhibitions and her solo debut, Moon Phases, at Michael Reid Murrurundi, Liu’s upcoming presentation will be a chance for collectors to discover work from an exciting talent at a pivotal moment in her career.

For all enquiries, please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au

Tamara Dean’s magnificent entanglements of human and natural worlds reach a wild crescendo with her operatic new series of lushly romantic, hyper-floral photographs, The Flower Duet – a landmark body of work in which lithe figures plunge through prismatic thresholds in a dazzling pas de deux with camellias, roses and other blooms.

While Dean’s fecund fantasias might at first appear like digitally conjured dreamscapes, they are, in fact, an extraordinary feat of practical effects, with the artist immersing and lensing her subjects in actual gardens and elaborately constructed underwater sets.

To receive further information about works in this exhibition, please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au

Across February, Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan’s deeply personal, visually epic stories of Country will unfold in a dynamic, colour-soaked display in the upstairs exhibition space at Michael Reid Sydney, when her solo exhibition Kuṉpu – Strength officially opens from Thursday February 7.

Working at Iwantja Arts – the Indigenous-owned and -governed art centre in the rocky desert country of Indulkana on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytatjara Lands (APY Lands), the Yankunytjatjara artist is at the forefront of one of the most exuberant, innovative and globally celebrated movements in contemporary painting.

Kuṉpu – Strength sees five new paintings grace the gallery walls and coincides with Cullinan’s inclusion in Art Collector magazine’s annual 50 Things issue. Paintings on view introduce a refreshing spectrum of warm colours into the artist’s compositions.

Kuṉpu – Strength will preview by appointment at Michael Reid Sydney before opening officially on Thursday  February 7, 2025. To receive further information about works of art exhibiting in this exhibition, please contact danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

In January, Michael Reid Sydney will exhibit 20 significant Australian photographs – across two folios of ten masterworks each – bringing together iconic artworks by Australia’s most celebrated 20th-century photographers, spanning six decades of cultural and artistic evolution.

These two master suites of ten photographs each capture the nation’s diverse creative vision and much of our core photographic history. From Olive Cotton’s elegant Teacup Ballet to Mervyn Bishop’s powerful portrayal of Indigenous land rights and Greg Weight’s portrait of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, these images reflect Australia’s ever-changing social and environmental narrative.

Showcasing masterful storytelling and enduring legacies, the two folios are cornerstones of Australian photography.

For further information about this exhibition please contact colinesoria@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Sydney will commence the calendar year with a presentation of Trent Parke’s Species series. Species made its Australian debut with a selection of photographs at Sydney Contemporary 2024. In January, we will present a more comprehensive collection draw from this technically astounding photographic series.

Photographs from Species have already garnered international acclaim after being shown at Milan Design Week in a touring exhibition specially commissioned by Magnum Photos and Veuve Clicquot. A centrepiece of the series was selected for Australia’s most prestigious photo-based media award, the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize.

Captured through an extraordinary feat of endurance and technical wizardry, Species is a thrilling synthesis of Parke’s exceptional skill and aesthetic sensibilities. “Shooting directly into the sun, with what could be considered a telescope, is a challenge in itself,” says the artist, who lensed his subjects from a distance of 700 metres. “It was 1/2000th of a second, but three months in the making.”

Parke sees Species as a meeting of two “symbols of universal energy” – the sun and the ocean melting together in a sumptuous pool of colour.

Photographs from this exhibition can be viewed at Michael Reid Sydney. To discuss and acquisition, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au