Into The Distance

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Into The Distance

Into The Distance assembles unreleased images from Narelle Autio‘s archive, pictures that were taken between 2003-2004 while on a road trip across Australia. Twenty years later, this exhibition precedes the forthcoming release of a major publication, one which provokes a conversation between Autio’s until now, very separate Watercolours and Outback photographs.

There will be ten key photographs on display that broadly encapsulate this period of Autio’s career, presented as one curated body of work. For the first time, photographs from two distinct periods of Narelle Autio’s career will collide. In addition, an installation of small prints will illuminate this entire period in compelling detail.

For private previews and acquisition enquiries, please contact danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

Exaltation

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Exaltation

  • Artist
    Lucy Vader
  • Dates
    14 Mar—13 Apr 2024
  • Catalogue
    Download now

Among the most adored and in-demand artists in the Michael Reid stable, Lucy Vader returns for her first solo exhibition at our Eora/Sydney gallery in four years.

A stunning suite of paintings that visually thread together to read as one continuous installation, Exaltation arrives after several successful presentations across our network – including at the most recent Sydney Contemporary – and will be celebrated with an opening reception on Thursday, 14 March.

A true iconoclast of pastoral painting, Vader’s deeply saturated scenes burst with energy, exuberance and vibrant undulations of paint, appearing as though they might momentarily break open to roiling undercurrents of pure colour that flow freely from one canvas to the next.

Reflecting her deep and enduring affinity for rural life, the artist imbues these bucolic pictures with dynamism and movement, evoking the landscape’s natural rhythms. As birds take flight against radiant skies and tumbling clouds, farm animals graze along rolling paddocks below.

Having moved to the Northern Rivers of NSW following the devastation of the 2022 floods, Vader’s visions of thick clouds bursting across heavenly skies read in Exaltation as an artist reaching for the sublime, while nodding to the resilience, grit and steely determination required to live and work in the country.

Private previews are currently being conducted at our Sydney Gallery ahead of the exhibition. To make an appointment, or to request a digital preview, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

Night Music

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Night Music

The first solo exhibition from India Mark since joining our stable of represented artists, Night Music forms a sequence of perfectly composed, intimately formed still-life paintings that shift between moments of quietude and tension in much the same way that a single piece of music might strike different chords and invite subtle variations in tone and textural nuance. “The same piece of music can be experienced in a variety of ways and interpreted differently depending on the interests of the conductor or musicians,” says the artist. “Composition notates the same objects, experiencing them in new ways. I am always fascinated that the same few objects can, with even the slightest difference in arrangement, be completely altered in feeling and nature.”

Working through the night hours to give her greater control of the light in her studio, Mark imbues her bijou canvases with velvety depth, glinting details and a featherlike haze emerging from fiery underpainting.

“This series leans mainly into my love for the paintings of Giorgio Morandi,” says Mark, who received the top award for an emerging artist in last year’s Lester Art Prize and was shortlisted for the 2023 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and Portia Geach Memorial Award. “In these works, I take reference from [Morandi’s] tendency to arrange objects in distinct units that draw emphasis on the connections and tensions between objects and the space around them.”

For information regarding acquisitions, please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au

Dr Christian Thompson AO + Marina Abramović:Adelaide Festival Takeover

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Dr Christian Thompson AO + Marina Abramović:Adelaide Festival Takeover

From March 1 – 4 Adelaide’s Space Theatre will host the Marina Abramović Adelaide Festival Takeover, exploring durational performance by leading artists from Australia and neighbouring countries. This will be the largest global communal participatory project curated by the Marina Abramović Institute, who have engaged Dr Christian Thompson AO to present a new performance work.

Coinciding with his Marina Abramović collaboration is the release of two new photographs that are now available to acquire. We warmly invite those interested to begin a conversation by being in touch.

Thompson newest works echo the sensibility of his sell out Future Ancestor, 2020 series, in which the artist presented alongside Regina Pilawuk Wilson and Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra.

Glisten

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Glisten

In an age of endless self-imaging, my wider photographic practice explores the expanded potentials for self-representation that emerge on the stage of the digital image.

Where the camera is conventionally claimed to possess a unique capacity for revealing something of a subject to its viewer, in my own practice, I instead perform acts of queer photographic dis/appearance.

My figure is buried beneath elaborate costumes that mutually entice yet resist the viewer’s examination while the image itself is polished and manicured, taking on an implausible synthetic glow that renders the image’s graphic, shallow, cartoonish.

This double bind of a figure both conspicuously produced for the lens while remaining nowhere to be seen — hiding in plain sight — reflects my interest in the potentials for queer representational in/visibility in which subjects pass before the camera un/seen.

The photographic works within Glisten form part of an imaginary queer blockbuster. Cinematic stills in which a single faceless hero-cum-heartthrob shifts through a wardrobe of camp costumes and stages a series of cinematic clichés.

As a collection of images, the works are deliberately non-linear and devoid of a coherent through line. Glisten instead offers a cyclical and unruly queer narrative, freeze-frames of filmic tropes that can be reassembled in endless ways without ever offering a clear, cohesive or happy ending.

Gerwyn Davies

To register interest in Glisten please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au

Gaypalani

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Gaypalani

Gaypalani draws her name from the tree of the same name whose yellow blossom enlivens the forests of North East Arnhemland and is a rich source of nectar for native bees. It is also used in dance and in post-funeral cleansing ceremonies as well for hardwood implements like clapsticks, spearthrowers and digging sticks.

In Yolŋu philosophy honey is a metaphor for hard won knowledge. The bees travel further and further to find the best sources to make the sweetest honey. They bring this back to the nest to share with their tribe. Gaypalani owes her inspiration to her late father whom she assisted in his celebrated artistic career. She continues to grieve for him as do his many friends worldwide. But she continues his spirit of enquiry and innovation as the first and foremost female exponent of the Found Movement.

Her intricate engravings on repurposed road signs and scrap metal are unique. They honour the songlines of her Marrakulu clan ancestral being Wuyal. These epic song poems track his odyssey from the stone quarries of Ŋilipitji in Southern Arnhem Land along the northern coastline and across to the West past Arnhem Bay. His quest for the sacred Avatar-like Waṉambi tree describes him passing through the lands of a confederacy of clans who are linked through this honeyed journey.

Working from the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land, Wanambi is the leading female practitioner within the ‘found movement’, which sees roadside material gleaned on Country repurposed as shimmering, intricately detailed works of art.

For information regarding acquisitions, please contact tobymeagher@michaelreid.com.au 

Myth Making – Artist Profile

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Myth Making is Troy Emery’s latest museum exhibition at Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) on view until Sunday, 3 March 2024. Myth Making marks a significant career milestone for Troy Emery and his first release of new works since joining our stable of represented artists.

Jointly conceived with fellow artist Kate Rhode, this exuberant exhibition dives into the stuff of legends, conjuring wild tales through a collision of classical mythology with the natural ecology of Victoria’s Wimmera and Grampians region.

An adventure in colour, whimsy and magnificent animal forms, this cabinet of curiosities poses Emery’s sculptural practice in dialogue with his paintings, which similarly conjure fantastical beings in brilliant hues. Remixing the tropes of museum display and decorative arts traditions, Myth Making confronts the fabulisms of the European imaginary and fashions boldly original stories from an engagement with the local environment.

Maitland Regional Art Gallery is located at 230 High Street, Maitland NSW 2320. Tuesday – Sunday 10.00am – 5.00pm

For further information, please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au.

Could you tell us about some of your early artistic influences? How do these continue to inform your practice today?

Before I started my formal fine arts education, I briefly studied fashion and textiles in Brisbane. This was where I got my interest in the kinds of materials I use now.

What initially drew you to the sculptural medium and how have you developed this over time? Are there themes, approaches, styles or techniques that you have returned to over time?

Initially I was interested in recreating the experience of natural science objects in the museum and they are sculptural in their physicality. There’s something I like about working to life-scale, even though the anatomical aspects of the first gets subverted under the bulk of textiles.

Is there a narrative or conceptual through line within the series of works comprising Myth Making? How do they reflect the direction of your practice at the moment?

All the sculptures incorporate bases of some kind. I’m interested in these trophy-like mountings of the works that refer back to museological displays, and taxidermy mounts.

Could you tell us about the artworks featured in Myth Making? Where did you begin with these paintings and what were some of the ideas and experiences that shaped them?

The oil stick drawings started as concept drawings for another project, a sketch for a sculpture, but I enjoyed the materiality of the oil stick so much that I expanded them into a series of 10 and they become more deranged the more I made.

The gouaches are more related to the original iteration on Myth Making at Horsham Regional Gallery in Victoria. Here I exhibited a number of paintings of mythical panthers , referencing the notorious Grampians panther. These gouaches are more cryptozoological creatures , imagined in the landscape.

How have you come about exploring with the painting medium and how does this relate to your sculptural practise?

I’ve always had a drawing component to my creative output. Recently I extrapolated that into a series of drawings and paintings depicting animals placed in simplified landscapes. I think I’m often interested in a sculptural aspect of painting and drawing. Thick paste like oil paint, and chunky crumbly oil sticks. It’s very tactile.

How would you describe the curatorial process – working to develop the collection of works presented in the Myth Making exhibition?

Maitland Regional Gallery has an impressive army of staff on board that were able to accommodate all our requests. Kate Rohde and I visited earlier in the year and planned out the installation, the wallpapers, custom furniture, and placement of works. When returned, everything was exactly how we had requested. Very grateful to curator Kim Blunt.

What have been some of your favourite career experiences?

In 2022 the National Gallery of Victoria commissioned a large work for the 2023 exhibition Melbourne Now. This was my largest most ambitious work at 3.5 meters tall. I enjoyed working at such a large scale. The exhibition also placed my work within the context of the wider Victorian artist community and it was my 1st major commission by a state institution.

Earth, Sea and Sky: Australian Contemporary Photography

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Earth, Sea and Sky: Australian Contemporary Photography

  • Artist
    Christian Thompson, Derek Henderson, Joseph McGlennon, Luke Shadbolt, Nici Cumpston, Polixeni Papapetrou, Petrina Hicks, Tamara Dean and Trent Parke
  • Dates
    9 Dec 2023—28 Jan 2024

Earth, Sea and Sky presents an exhibition of leading Australian artists and photographers; Christian Thompson, Derek Henderson, Joseph McGlennon, Luke Shadbolt, Nici Cumpston, Polixeni Papapetrou, Petrina Hicks, Tamara Dean and Trent Parke, pushing the boundaries of photography in form and matter as they meditate on our relationship with the environment.

This collection of work explores the human fascination with undulating waterways and ocean scapes, our relationship and connection to the flora and fauna of country, soothsaying ephemeral cumulus cloud formations and sky colours, and the grinding effects of climate change on our world.

Earth, Sea and Sky reflects on the natural world and our explicitly human place within a complex network of eco systems that mirror each other.

It is within Earth, Sea and Sky that we can be humbled by the interconnected place of our humanity in the immaculate expanse of nature and, in being so, come to know the world around us as exquisite force majeure, more vulnerable than the sum of its parts.

Earth Sea and Sky is curated by Elizabeth Reidy.

All installation images courtesy of Silversalt and Bondi Pavillon.

Space Invaders

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Space Invaders

  • Artist
    Megan Hales
  • Dates
    11 Jan—10 Feb 2024
  • Catalogue
    Download now

Michael Reid Sydney will commence our 2024 program with a debut solo exhibition by Sydney based painter Megan Hales. Space Invaders is the artist’s first exhibition since exhibiting in our annual group survey PAINTING NOW, where her entire suite of paintings were immediately acquired.

This exhibition also marks the culmination of this years Art Incubator program – for which Hales was one of two artists specially selected to receive its annual grant, mentoring and support in building a major show with a leading gallery.

Exploring the tightening nexus between human and non-human worlds, Megan Hales’ paintings present moments on the cusp of chaos, as nature intrudes on familiar urban scenarios.

We are now inviting those interested in Space Invaders to register their interest by contacting dean@michaelreid.com.au

Breathe Deeply

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Breathe Deeply

  • Artist
    Julz Beresford
  • Dates
    11 Jan—3 Feb 2024
  • Catalogue
    Download now

Our Summertime program at Michael Reid Sydney sees Hawkesbury painter Julz Beresford make her Michael Reid Sydney debut, exhibiting 11 new paintings. Beresford’s Eora/Sydney gallery exhibition sees her work reach a new level of collectability and critical attention, and follows a series of historical exhibitions at Northern Beaches, Murrurundi and Southern Highlands.

Breathe Deeply will open from 11 January 2024. Paintings from this exhibition can now be previewed at Michael Reid Sydney by appointment. Please contact danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au to discuss viewings and acquisitions.

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