Among Friends

Paintings from Chelsea Gustafsson’s first solo show at Michael Reid Berlin since the announcement of her representation by the gallery have now arrived at Michael Reid Sydney on their way to the German capital and can be previewed in person for a limited time. Aptly titled Among Friends, this dazzling new body of work finds Gustafsson revisiting familiar motifs with renewed gusto and panache while instilling a disarming sense of personality into the starring subjects – collected curios and anthropomorphised detritus – at the centre of each small yet highly cinematic vignette.

Based in the Victorian coastal town of Barwon Heads, Gustafsson has honed an entirely original painterly style and approach that melds extraordinary technical skill with lashings of wit, pictorial panache and a sense of narrative intrigue. Working with an ultra-precise hand on thick, intimately scaled timber boards, the artist recasts the still-life genre as a dazzling portal into cinematic worlds in miniature, with found and familiar objects acting as protagonists within intricate pictorial plays.

Delighting in the alchemy of objects staged in dynamic sculptural arrangements, Gustafsson’s compositions toy with framing, scale, depth of field and trompe l’oeil effects, often nesting pictures within pictures and allowing motifs to recur from one body of work to the next. Salvaged chairs and disco balls, discarded packaging and postcards, kitschy porcelain ornaments and fragmented pictures appear layered within the painted space. The resulting works pull the viewer into enigmatic micro-worlds – scenes spliced together with a precision and optical charge that belies their intimate scale.

“Painting for me is a contemplative response to the news and events going on in the world, the books I’m reading, and podcasts and music I’m listening to,” says Gustafsson, a finalist in numerous prizes, including the Lester Art Prize (2025), Omnia Art Prize (2025), Basil Sellers Art Prize (2024) and Kennedy Art Prize (2021, 2023). “Often I find myself drawn to an object or image and it’s only through the repetition of portraying it that I begin to understand its presence in my work.”

In Among Friends, the artist spins appealing characters, filmic atmospheres and art-historical allusions from the objects comprising each tableau. A mirror ball and flickering votive effect a kind of discofied memento mori, while objects gleaned from her studio play peek-a-boo through rumpled paper.

To request a preview or book a viewing before works from Among Friends depart for Berlin, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au