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.

Tamara Dean’s major solo show High Jinks in the Hydrangeas opened to audiences in November 2021. This landmark exhibition had the inaugural distinction of showing at Ngununggula, the newly established Southern Highland Regional Gallery located in Retford Park. Ngununggula means ‘belonging’ in the Gundungurra language which Dean’s new series echos. 

High Jinks in the Hydrangeas explores Dean’s desire to be in and of nature during the first global lockdown in 2020, and how interior dialogues around isolation was inextricably linked with the escape into the exterior world.

In the edit I was ready to see my body with all of the criticisms I would ordinarily inflict upon myself, but instead I saw something in myself that I had never seen before. I saw courage, agility, humour and strength. Traits that will carry me through the challenges of these times.

In pushing myself both emotionally and physically to create these works I feel that I have come away with the most personal body of work I have ever made.

-Tamara Dean, 2021

Following eight months of rural travelling chased with uninterrupted work in her Lismore studio, Lucy Vader presented a most remarkable and ambitious collection of landscape paintings in One Fine Day.

Lucy Vader spends a large portion of her year travelling regional Australia in pursuit of artistic inspiration. Excursions to Springfield in Young NSW, Millers Creek of the Merriwa Ranges and mini-residencies on the sheep farms of friends all supply Vader with creative fuel for her paintings. Vader’s travels and continual pursuit of the perfect landscape sees her work remain unmatched in its authenticity.

Vader’s eye is attuned to rural landscape in a way that only lived experience can bestow. In her paintings, the shapes of trees endemic to particular climates and regions are brought to us by immeasurable knowledge. Drifting clouds and promises of rain, azure blue heavens and patterns made by cattle and sheep are all made lively through her gestural but considered layers of paint.