For artist Carly Le Cerf, who is based in Western Australia’s Mount Barker, on Wagyl Kaip and Southern Noongar lands, conveying the vast beauty of Australia’s rugged interior landscapes is a dance between what she remembers and letting her medium speak. Working with encaustic wax and oil painting techniques to illustrate the places she visits, Carly’s texture-rich works derive from an immersive journey.

“Every year, I go off on location for a solid two weeks and then return to my home studio to create a body of work with everything I’ve gathered from my time away. I investigate that area in every way possible – I meditate on site, record the sound, take videos and photos, write and paint.”

Yellow Centre is Carly Le Cerf’s first major solo exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney, and follows a series of successful exhibitions at Michael Reid Murrurundi. Comprised of fifteen new major works, Yellow Centre is the culmination of a two-week self directed residency to the MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory. On this occasion, Le Cerf was accompanied by a group of her peers, collecting crucial material that would inform major works  back in her Mount Barker studio.

In the studio, Le Cerf sometimes refers to her on-site notes and other times relies on pictures built up in her mind. The artist prefers letting the practice flow rather than trying to control it. “While I come back with plenty of information, the work itself is very process-driven,” she says. “There’s a lot of alchemy involved with encaustics. It’s organic, just like nature is… it does its own thing.”

The chunky nature of encaustics, a blend of beeswax and dammar resin, proves ideal for Le Cerf’s rugged terrains. The artist attributes her love of these landscapes to her parents, with whom she moved to Perth from the UK, when she was five. The family would spend time camping and exploring in nature. “They were fed the Leyland Brothers growing up, and that’s what Australia was all about to us!” she says.

Since 2008, Carly Le Cerf’s work has been exhibited in Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, as well as in Berlin. Her multi-layered observations of Australian typography have commanded significant collecting attention as well as critical praise. In 2020 she achieved the professional milestone of selling an entire exhibition to a single patron.

When asked about her personal relationship to the landscapes that she paints, Le Cerf remarks: “I think I look at the landscape differently to someone who was born here, in the sense that I don’t have a feeling of ownership.”

Yellow Centre will exhibit at Michael Reid Sydney from April 13 – May 13, 2023.

Portions of this text originally appeared in Country Style magazine’s March 2023 issue. Words contributed by Samantha Engmond and Country Style Magazine.

Lions have been an enduring icon since the dawn of artistic expression. Throughout recorded history, the formidable beast has been a prevailing symbol; equipping artists, scholars, writers and religious institutions with the means to extract profoundly existential expressions of humanity.

In Jordan Richardson’s Sydney exhibition The Lion’s Den, the artist borrows from this history to deliver a collection of new paintings that are deeply personal and broadly empathetic; metaphorically grasping the birth of the artist’s first son. Each painting exemplifies the technical mastery that has seen Jordan Richardson recognised as one of Australia’s most talented young painters.

Throughout his career, Jordan Richardson has pursued the contemporary emulation of 18th century European painting. His works are a pastiche of Baroque and Romantic influence, present-day narrative and good humour. For Richardson, the act of painting itself also drives his work, as does the contemporary subversion of famous paintings in history.

Much like his 2022 Archibald finalist painting Venus (in which Diego Velázquez’s 17th century painting The Rokeby Venus is reinterpreted as the nude writer and commentator, Benjamin Law), The Lion’s Den borrows directly from historical art examples. Notes of Delacroix’s mid 19th century series The Lion Hunt inspire the collection, while Goya’s influence is especially evident in the gruesome, yet tenderly painted pictures of male torsos.

The Lion’s Den is an exhibition that is endearing, vulnerable and violent all at once, demonstrating Jordan Richardson’s special talent for distilling volumes of art, history and personal account into small parcels of delightful visual poetry.

To stare into the surface of a Betty Chimney painting, is to witness an adoration of country, direct from the artist’s heart. Delicately choreographed and altogether mesmeric, every moment captured in a Betty Chimney painting is an autobiographical ode to a life rescued by country.

Born in Port Augusta SA in 1957, Chimney spent her childhood years in Coober Pedy before moving to Indulkana.

The desert country of Indulkana Community is located the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the remote north-west of South Australia; an area of the continent now globally famed for its artistic output.

I was lucky because Alec Baker’s father came and picked up my mother and me. So we moved to Indulkana, when I was about 8 years old. Alec Baker is about 10 years older than me, so he was off working mostly. But my mother and I loved living in Indulkana. We lived in a big wiltja by the Indulkana creek.

Alec Baker (who is also presenting an exhibition of paintings at Michael Reid Sydney) would go on to have a profound influence on Betty Chimney. Today, the two artists co-direct the community’s now prolific First Nations owned and governed art centre and are considered key contributors to the global advocacy of contemporary First Nations painting.

Ngayuku Ngura (My Country) is Betty Chimney’s largest assemblage of new paintings since her 2020 exhibition of the same name. The exhibition showcases seven new works of art, and one collaborative painting made in tandem with her daughter, Raylene Walatinna. Nganampa Ngura (Our Country), 2022 is a generational blend of visual language and noticeably diverges from the larger collection. Through their subtle, but effective use of blue, Chimney and Walatina orchestrate an electrifying blend of heart, mind, family and country that makes this, and every Betty Chimney painting so special.

Ngayuku Ngura (My Country) will show at Michael Reid Sydney until February 25th 2023.