In his 2022 exhibition Wondering About Things – his first shown at Michael Reid Sydney’s Chippendale space – Marc Etherington presented a selection of new paintings and sculptures direct from his Canadian studio. Self taught and born in Sydney’s south, Marc Etherington spent his formative years developing a strong following within the Sydney art community while fostering his emerging painting career. Etherington’s naive application and heightened imagination have been integral in propelling the artists career, who is presently recognised as one of Australia’s most unique and celebrated living artist’s.

Marc Etherington’s Michael Reid Sydney exhibition was a medley of the artist’s latest works that traversed pop culture, Canadian folklore and snippets of the artist’s personal adventures.

In April 2022 Dr Christian Thompson AO Exhibited his latest collection of artworks at Michael Reid Sydney. Encompassing performative photography and a new video work, the title of the exhibition took its name from Thompson’s new and unreleased photograph, Being Human Human Being. Boasting a softer palette of lavender and pastel yellow, Being Human Human Being joined a growing collection of Thompson’s arresting and enigmatic ‘Flower Wall’ works.

There is a familiarity that you cannot help but encounter when you glance upon a painting by Isca Greenfield-Sanders; a thinly veiled memory that diffuses each work, drawing you toward a recognised place or moment, just outside of reach. Where to locate this memory is a question that gently hovers, as you ponder how the artist has crafted these exquisite images.

It is in the hues and dominant spectrums of Kodachrome colour that our first clue to the origin of each image lightly surfaces; evidencing the profound and joyous influence that amateur photography has impressed on the artist’s life’s work. It is not a coincidence that Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ first Australian exhibition is showing at a contemporary photographic gallery. In fact, her entire painting practice is wedded to the light based medium.

Isca Greenfield-Sanders commences each new exhibition by consulting her archive of collected negatives and slides, mostly dated from the 1950’s and 60’s. Acquired from markets and auction lots, these once-forgotten relics are photographic accounts of middle-class America, captured by unknown photographers who occasionally struggled to operate their cameras. While firmly concerned with the nostalgic agency attached to analogue photography, Greenfield-Sanders’ work is directed solely through a painterly lens.

The aesthetics of amateur photography has, over decades, informed and underpinned the visuals of Greenfield-Sanders’ painting work, which occurs in cross-disciplinary stages in the artists New York studio. Beginning with a digital collage framework of multiple found photographs, images are delicately rendered in watercolour and colour pencil. This process sees a once distant and anonymous photographic moment receive a contemporary revival, brought into current discussion through dozens of hours of highly skilled painting work.

The artist’s large scale oil paintings on canvas (held in distinguished public collections such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, Brooklyn Museum, NY, Victoria and Albert Museum, UK) are directly informed by their parent watercolour studies, and are the final stage in a series of protracted studio processes. The binding element that threads this three-stage process- found, domestic photography- is by this stage diffused by a filter of three artistic mediums, drawing wonderful parallels to the rogue memories petitioned by these striking works of art.

Ocean Eyes of Blue was Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ first Australian exhibition. The artist lives and works in New York.

In 2022, for the first time in her career, Petrina Hicks invited audiences ‘into the studio’ by presenting a delicate installation of test print polaroids at Michael Reid Sydney. Mapping the artist’s entire career and containing hundreds of never before seen images, Polaroids was a documentary exhibition that put light to the working processes of one of Australia’s most talented photographic artists.

Polaroids was accompanied by the public release of two unseen editions by Petrina Hicks, Lauren and Monk and Five Dragons.

To commence 2022, Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin embarked on an ambitious collaboration with Narelle Autio and Trent Parke in hosting an iteration of The Summation of Force, a film produced by the artist duo that has never shown in Sydney.

Premiering on Thursday December 9th and showing throughout the summer, The Summation of Force exhibited at Michael Reid Sydney and was collectors’ first opportunity to acquire still images from this very important work of art. On view were large format stills, a portfolio of photographs from The Summation of Force, and an installation of original ephemera used in the production of the film.

Summation of Force is an astounding moving image installation initially launched at the Samstag Museum of Art to widespread acclaim in 2017. Regarded as masterpiece collaboration, the poetic and haunting video installation is breathtaking example of the cinematic vision that informs the photographic practice of both Narelle Autio and Trent Parke.

To celebrate Andrea Huelin creating the label for the 2021 Four Pillars’ Christmas Gin, the artist released a suite of luscious paintings Christmas Festive, which celebrating the Australian Christmas table.

Huelin’s label and new paintings encapsulated the unbridled joy of a big Aussie Christmas lunch, spreads of prawns, pavlova, sunshine, vibrant company and of course a few glasses of festive gin that fill our merry tables.

Showing at the Basil Sellers Exhibition Centre, Lightyears was an exhibition that examined the important position of photography in Australian contemporary art. This exhibition assembled twelve of Australia’s leading contemporary photographers who have each made significant contributions to the direction of global photo-media.

Lightyears included iconic photographs by industry leading photographic artists. Each work on view was displayed using the latest lightbox technology. The images we saw in Lightyears were selected by the artists as ones which best highlight the colour, detail, and visual ambition capable with this new and luminous medium.

Exhibition highlights included new lightbox photographs from Narelle Autio, Trent Parke, Tamara Dean, Petrina Hicks, Nici Cumpston and Gerwyn Davies. Joseph McGlennon, Polixeni Papapetrou, Luke Shadbolt, Derek Henderson and Fabian Muir will also exhibited.