Ever since Regina Pilawuk Wilson’s golden yellow Syaw (fishnet) won the General Painting Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2003, her elegantly structured paintings have quietly but unequivocally fixed her name on the contemporary art map.

Regina Pilawuk Wilson is now Australia’s most senior contemporary female First Nations artist, and is one at the height of her creative powers. Wilson is the matriarch of her community and is a softly spoken, major force in the Australian art world today.

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin is honoured to work with Regina Wilson and her Community, which has for two decades produced significant and bright creative outcomes.

Deme ngayi ngebenderridu tyabuty ngayi nimbi apirri nimbi demewurity yedi syaw, danifityatit dirrperderr e kuderri e Elifala kana Kagu dininganmadi waniwirrfimeleli Kagu wukume nyinda wadi leli. Ngenikeh ngayi mengindi yemewurity kana ngan caliku dide, deme tyabuty nayin nimbi deme wurity yedi apirri nimbi. Ngayi kana ngarimpek ngaganim tyabuty ngayi nimbi syaw demewurity yedi, nyinimbi deme nyinin ngarifityat pupunyi kana, deme ngayi ngarifityat syaw, pupunyi ngeremwurity ngaganim. Deme ngayi napa deti. Ngangi tyamen napa minde ngangi awa yeyi wirrim.

My grandfather, before European contact, used to make lots of fish traps to put in the rivers and billabongs to catch fish, turtle and prawns. My sister said for me to put the design onto the canvas so I can tell the story about what our grandfather used to do and the syaw and pupunyi, now the story is owned by me through painting and weaving. To share the story to the western world, wakai.

-Regina Pilawuk Wilson, 2024

For assistance with an acquisition please contact tobymeagher@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Sydney is thrilled to present Skull Kicks by Marc Etherington – a capsule collection of 12 blazing new wall sculptures that play to the passions of art lovers and sneakerheads alike.

Dropping Friday, 26 April, Skull Kicks immortalises a collector’s dream wardrobe of classic, cult and covetable sneakers, each one perfectly in step with Etherington’s painterly signatures and fashioned by hand in three-dimensional relief.

The acclaimed artist and six-time Archibald finalist is known for his idiosyncratic style, which sees subcultural touchstones, childhood memories and scenes of everyday domestic life play out with dark wit and a touch of absurdity. Nods to Jurassic Park, Freddy Krueger, boomboxes and old-school video game aesthetics tap into the experience of coming of age in the 1980s and 90s.

His latest crate dive through fan culture, pop-esoterica and obscure objects of desire reflects an affinity for merch, memorabilia and physical media – the material whirl that was wallpaper for a generation on the cusp of the internet and which now fires the nostalgia of obsessive collectors and online custodians of a pre-digital pop sphere.

Where once they were commercially produced, these objects are now recreated by hand, with Etherington individually forming each shoe’s distinctive silhouette with hand-cut and -painted board. The artist’s method matches the reverence with which sneakerheads might eye and covet these artefacts of the not-so-distant past while paying tribute to an array of vibrant designs and the subcultural scenes they signify.

Etherinton’s sneaker canon includes classics such as the Nike Air Force Ones and Converse All-Stars, as well as some exceptionally rare examples from sneakerhead lore: the “Freddy Krueger” Nike Dunk Lows, the cult Assassins (featured in season two of The Simpsons) and the Nike MAG, which debuted in 1989’s Back to the Future II and was instantly one of the most coveted – but unavailable – shoes in history.

All works from the series will be available to explore and acquire from Michael Reid Sydney in an online exclusive launching Friday, 26 April. And if your ultimate sneaker isn’t already enshrined in Etherington’s pantheon, hit the button below and let us know what your custom Skull Kicks design would be.

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

The first solo exhibition from Troy Emery since joining our stable of represented artists, Figurations transforms our upstairs exhibition space with a cast of wild and magnificent creatures dazzlingly sculpted with a couturier’s precision and imaginative flourish.

Fringed and fabulous in languorous repose, Emery’s impossible fauna reflects an enduring fascination with nature. Drawing on art history, science, decorative crafts and camp sensibilities, the artist explores complex entanglements of human and non-human worlds.

Figurations follows the recent announcement of Emery’s major commission, Guardian Lion, which will see him produce a spectacular, kaleidoscopic, illuminated sculptural landmark soaring high above Melbourne’s Southbank and serving as a bold visual gateway to the city.

For preview and acquisition enquiries, please contact dean@michaelreid.com.au

E O Hoppé (1878-1972): portrait, travel, and topographic photographer

When Emil Otto Hoppé arrived in Australia from London in 1930, the German-born photographer was at the height of his powers. Hoppé was widely considered to be the most famous photographer in the world. The dapper Hoppé, who was fond of wearing spats, cravats and sported a mane of luxuriant black hair, epitomised the celebrity portrait photographer, snapping such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, Albert Einstein, Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky and Virginia Woolf. Hoppé was in addition, a gifted observational photographer.

Commissioned in 1929 to create a photographic portrait of Australia, Hoppé approached the project with a thoroughness that still shines through. For a moment, let us consider Hoppé’s presence here. The seemingly simple act of traveling to Australia, and around this country in 1930, was not a matter to be taken lightly. The time, considerable expense, and project management of the commission in that day can be viewed in stark contrast to today’s contemporary artists, their abilities to move relatively freely, and the modesty of contemporary costs. Hoppé coming to Australia was a serious matter. Assisted by his 18-year-old son, Frank, the 52-year-old Hoppe seemed as drawn to inland Australia as to its coastal cities, and his photographs of remote First Nations peoples and their communities provide unvarnished portraits of their life almost 100 years ago.

Cecil Beaton, the British fashion, portraitist and war photographer – who studied Hoppé from first to last – called him “the Master”, and anyone might learn a great deal from his photographs. Indeed, learning was a central tenant to Hoppé’s approach. There are no preconceptions, you feel, controlling Hoppé’ s portraits: each sitter is someone to discover from the start, someone to converse with, to try to comprehend. Hoppé wanted the photographic technicalities to be as simple as possible, he said, so he could focus on his rapport with the sitter. He didn’t vanish the subject under metres of black stage cloth or bathe them in trick-up indoor lighting. Hoppé sat as close to his subject as possible, with a camera cable release, so the shutter could be operated unobtrusively. No fuss, and as little intervention as possible.

Within this evocative selection of photographs, from a most extraordinary private archive, we see Hoppé’s vintage print of three Aboriginal women dressed in European clothes studying a film poster at Hermannsburg Mission. This print captures the incongruity of life for many First Nations people in 1930; dressed for a new world; considering its popular culture from a palpable distance. Then we have photographs of traditionally dressed men, devoid of social judgment, or the early tendency to exoticise. We also see traditional men painted for ceremony, but instead playing football. A joyous performance; but not for the camera. Hoppé’s unsentimental humanity is a unifying theme in this exhibition.

Hoppé had an eye for the unconsidered. His print of a surfer, from 1930 ranks as one of only a handful of early images taken of that pastime in its early days. For a German living in London, to see a man on a plank on a wave must have been an extraordinary thing. There is much to see here. And consider. Hoppé’s brief, influential presence in Australia adds an important chapter to the history of our nation. It is not recorded whether a talented 19-year-old apprentice in Cecil Bostock’s Sydney studio named Max Dupain ever met the energetic German from London, but Dupain’s rapid mastery of modern photography might suggest he did so or at least, knew of Hoppé’s work.

Art Museum Collections
National Portrait Gallery (London)
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
National Media Museum, Bradford
George Eastman House at Rochester
Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin (Gernsheim
Collection)
New York Public Library
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.

© E.O. Hoppé Estate Collection/Curatorial Inc.