Sulman Prize-winning artist Andrew Sullivan arrives in Painting Now with five extraordinary new works, representing the culmination of a brilliant career spanning more than 30 years and encompassing numerous accolades. In addition to his triumph at the 2014 Sulman, he has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize, the Blake Art Prize and the Mosman Art Prize and has exhibited widely across Australia and abroad.

Sullivan renders his paintings with meticulous, masterful precision and a distinctive treatment of pictorial space – one that splices collagistic, trompe-l’oeil effects into tapestry-like landscapes reminiscent of Ukiyo-e prints. Against soft tonal gradations, his paintings present a wonderfully idiosyncratic array of motifs, allusions and allegorical figures, forming curious connections and enacting dioramic narratives tinged with humour, melancholy and vivid colour.

These symbolic details play out across Sullivan’s canvas like an exploded cabinet of curiosities. Traversing a vast spectrum of knowledge systems – from the scientific to the superstitious – as well as various aesthetic modes and moments in evolutionary history, they seem drawn together as if by the strange logic of dreams, memories, discursive trains of thought or the encyclopaedic parataxis of the digital sphere.

Sullivan’s paintings are held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, Artbank, Ballarat Regional Art Gallery, the National Art School and Buxton Contemporary. We are excited to present his latest body of work and invite collectors to register their interest below to receive priority access to his Painting Now series.

For more, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

Naarm/Melbourne-based contemporary painter Lucy Roleff returns to Michael Reid Sydney with Field Notes – a quietly sublime collection of still-life paintings drawing upon a recent residency on the remote West Coast of Tasmania.

Depicting small domestic objects and detritus collected on her morning walks along the shore, the artist’s gently brooding and romantic interior scenes reflect the quiet rhythms of daily life amid the rugged splendour and elemental drama of the Tasmanian wilderness. “I was eager to immerse myself in the natural surroundings – wandering along the beach, collecting shells and intriguing objects, and watching the weather shift dramatically from my desk, which overlooked the water,” says the artist.

Roleff is interested in the act of looking – the way affinities form and objects familiar and fascinating can become talismanic vessels for our desires. Synced to the domestic sphere’s quiet, quotidian rhythms while containing echoes of past lives in their timeworn grandeur, these collected objects pull our focus, invite moments of reverie and compel us in ways that reflect our aspirations or ideas of selfhood.

“I came to relish a simple, domestic routine,” says the artist of her foray out in the field. “I was struck by a sense of being suspended in time, allowing me to imagine the lives of those who once ventured out to sea, those who waited and watched, and the anticipation that came with each change in the weather.”

The final remaining works from Field Notes by Lucy Roleff can be previewed and acquired by request before the exhibition’s opening in our upstairs exhibition space alongside Painting Now.

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

From Monday 16th September a magnificent selection of new paintings by Betty Chimney will be on view at Michael Reid Sydney, supplying collectors with the opportunity to view new work by one of Australia’s most beloved contemporary painters.

Chimney is firmly at the forefront of the extraordinarily innovative and globally acclaimed new wave of contemporary First Nations painters working at Iwantja Arts, the Indigenous-owned and -governed art centre at Indulkana, where she is also Director.

In this exhibition visitors will encounter the largest examples of the artist’s work to date, including an extraordinary three-metre-wide painting created in collaboration with her daughter, Raylene Walatinna.

Across August and September, Michael Reid Sydney will exhibit the latest series of luminous still life paintings by celebrated Brisbane-based artist, John Honeywill.

Honeywill’s practice is propelled by the elusive, ineffable power of objects that hold his eye. By isolating these affinities against ambiguous, radiant planes, Honeywill manages to render his subjects with a meticulous precision that approaches the hyperreal. From sugary sweets to vessels enclosing peonies, magnolias or fruits, the artist’s closely observed subjects all appear lit from within.

This is John Honeywill’s fifth solo exhibition with the Gallery and his second in our Chippendale gallery space. New Paintings by John Honeywill will exhibit between 15 August and 14 September, with an opening reception occurring on Thursday 15 August, 6-8pm. The artist will be in attendance. Our event is open to all and will be sponsored by Sammy Piquant.

For more information on the artist’s work, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

Across August and September, Michael Reid Sydney will invite guest artist, Samuel Leighton-Dore to transform our mezzanine gallery by presenting a 220-piece wall based ceramic installation. Unproduced Screenplay (excerpt) is a visually delightful collision of disciplines that playfully interrogates social behaviour in public art spaces. Having recently exhibited at Tweed Regional Gallery, Unproduced Screenplay (excerpt) will show in a commercial gallery context for the first time, bringing a new dimension to the commentary threaded within the delicately constructed work of art.

Each piece of this ambitious installation is a hand-made ceramic form that collectively assemble to echo the typeface and layout of a film script. In its presence, the viewer assumes the role as protagonist, with the gallery behaving as the setting to an art themed micro-scene. Leighton-Dore’s work encourages the consideration of how we interact with contemporary art, and what role we play in imbuing art with meaning.

Unproduced Screenplay will exhibit between 15 August and 14 September, with an opening reception occurring on Thursday 15 August, 6-8pm. The artist will be in attendance. Our event is open to all and will be sponsored by Sammy Piquant.

For more information on the artist’s work, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

Samuel Leighton-Dore is a screenwriter, director, published author and visual artist who lives and works on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Across multiple intersecting disciplines, Leighton-Dore’s work brings a sense of heart and humour to complex themes of identity, sexuality and psychology.

Photos by Sabine Bannard and Aaron Chapman

Michael Reid Sydney welcomes the latest body of work by Kuninjku artist Owen Yalandja, the winner of the Telstra Bark Painting Award at the 2023 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

This exhibition pools a series of Yalandja’s carved Mimih figures alongside his intricate paintings on bark for a dazzling dive through the stories of the Ancestral female freshwater spirit, the yawkyawk. As a senior member of the Dangkorlo clan, Yalandja is a custodian of the sacred billabong where the mermaid-like yawkyawk spirits reside near his outstation, Barrihdjowkkeng.

“Yawkyawk is my Dreaming,” says Yalandja, who works at Maningrida Arts & Culture on Kunibídji country in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. “I love making these sculptures and I have invented a way to represent the fish scales on her body.”

Meticulously rendered, cascading water droplets play out alongside these shimmering scale effects, which Yalandja represents with the upsidedown v-chevron he developed while also applying the dotting style taught to him by his father, renowned artist Crusoe Kuningbal.

To register interest in Owen Yalandja, please email tobymeagher@michaelreid.com.au

Our winter exhibition program is anchored by an expansive exhibition of new paintings by Emily Cullinan and Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan – mother and daughter artists, both of whom work from Iwantja Arts in the rocky desert country of Indulkana Community on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytatjara Lands. Emily Cullinan and Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan are among the leading voices in one of the most dynamic, innovative and celebrated movements in contemporary First Nations painting.

One of the most senior women in her community, Emily Cullinan has been an integral part of the Iwantja art scene for many years and recently experienced a major breakthrough in her practice. Her vibrant paintings are inspired by memories of travelling vast distances on foot across APY Lands with her family.

Nganampa Ngura (Our Country) will have added resonance by placing Emily Cullinan’s work in dialogue with that of her daughter, Hadley’s Art Prize and Ravenswood Art Prize winner Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan, whose sublime perspectives of Indulkana Country are conjured via sweeps of deep red crested by rhythmic striations of purple.

All paintings from Nganampa Ngura (Our Country) by Emily Cullinan and Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan and be explored and acquired below. To discuss works from the exhibition with a gallery representative, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au