A magnificent selection of new paintings by Betty Chimney will show at Sydney Contemporary 2024, supplying collectors with the opportunity to acquire new work by one of Australia’s most beloved contemporary painters.

Chimney is firmly at the forefront of the extraordinarily innovative and globally acclaimed new wave of contemporary First Nations painters working at Iwantja Arts, the Indigenous-owned and -governed art centre at Indulkana, where she is also Director.

This year, visitors will encounter the largest examples of the artist’s work to date, including an extraordinary three-metre-wide painting created in collaboration with her daughter, Raylene Walatinna.

One week prior to the art fair, select paintings will be available to view by appointment at Michael Reid Sydney in Chippendale. To make an appointment, or to enquire about available paintings ahead fo the art fair, please contact willkollmorgen@michaelreid.com.au

At Sydney Contemporary 2024, Mai Nguyễn-Long will present The Vomit Girl Project at Installation Contemporary, curated by Talia Linz.

Positioned at the entrance to the fair, the kaleidoscopic display collides inspiration from cultural artefacts and personal family history to represent diasporic narratives. The work encompasses a selection of clay characters inspired by đình wood carvings and a Vietnamese rural aesthetic known as mộc mạc. Mộc mạc is generally translated as rough, rustic or even uncouth. To the artist, however, it is an earthy aesthetic guided by practical principles of survival, providing a primordial link to Indigenous Vietnamese nature-spirit consciousness and mother goddess practices in Vietnam.

Nguyễn-Long’s The Vomit Girl Project is a way for the artist to unpack her conflicted relationship with her Vietnamese heritage and is connected to notions of resistance, belonging and self-determination. Fluid associations and playful and unorthodox expressions of Buddhism inform her clay-building method. These figures and vessels are occasionally marked with broken chopsticks, extracted human teeth and porcupine quill. Nguyễn-Long’s vomit motif becomes an ambiguous and tongue-like form, representing one’s mother tongue, as well as those who have lost their mother tongue.

This major presentation precedes the artist’s participation in the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA, which opens later this year.

To enquire about the sculptural works comprising The Vomit Girl Project by Mai Nguyễn-Long, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

For Sydney Contemporary 2024, Marc Etherington has assembled a collector’s dream of sculptural pop-culture paraphernalia, cult and covetable footwear, cigarette-smoking mallards and trestle table merch, which will all coalesce into one of the most magnetic displays at the art fair.

Living and working in Canada, the six-time Archibald Prize finalist is known globally for his idiosyncratic style, remixing subcultural touchstones, childhood memories and snippets from domestic life in ways that nod to the experience of coming of age in the 1980s and 90s. Etherington immortalises his subjects with his signature wit and painterly sensibilities and fashions them by hand in three-dimensional relief.

Etherington’s up-coming cultural canon installation will contain more than fifty pieces and can be privately previewed ahead of the fair. Sign up now to be the first to receive an exclusive preview or to book a private appointment at Chippendale ahead of the event.

For acquisition enquiries, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

Please join us at Sydney Contemporary 2024 for the debut of four extraordinary new paintings from Australia’s most senior female contemporary First Nations painter, Regina Pilawuk Wilson. Wilson is a senior Ngan’gikurrungurr artist, NATSIAA winner and cultural director of Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation.

A master weaver, award-winning painter and living legend whose work is acclaimed and collected globally, Wilson’s newest paintings thread together two distinct strands of her practice, linking the spellbinding line work that pulses through her colour-soaked paintings with a weaving tradition spanning generations.

Wilson’s work is in the permanent collections of the British Museum, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Gallery of Modern Art. She has exhibited at LACMA in Los Angeles, The Moscow Biennale, the National Museum of Arts in Washington D.C. and numerous other important public and private institutions worldwide.

“My grandfather, before European contact, used to make fish traps to put in the rivers and billabongs to catch fish, turtles and prawns,” says Wilson. “My sister said for me to put the design onto the canvas so I can tell my story about what our grandfather used to do and the syaw and pupunyi. Now the story is owned by me through painting and weaving.”

Sign up now to be the first to receive exclusive previews and priority access to this upcoming release before the art fair launches at Carriageworks this September.

For acquisition enquiries, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

Breakthrough artist Julz Beresford makes her Sydney Contemporary debut in 2024, presenting a rotation of three new landscape paintings across four days. This year Beresford has become one of our most coveted new painters, an accolade that follows news of her formal representation by Michael Sydney + Berlin. Collectors of the artist’s paintings are situated coast to coast, with an increasing appetite being demonstrated by collectors in North America and the UK.

Beresford’s paintings depict heroic and immersive terrain and are soulful expressions of her enduring affinity for the New South Wales Hawkesbury Region. The artist captures the stillness, romanticism and moody quietude of rippling waterways flanked by tangled bush, tumbling sandstone and ethereal wisps of eucalyptus.

Julz Beresford’s major presentation at Sydney Contemporary precedes a scheduled solo exhibition in December at Michael Reid Sydney. Those interested in acquiring are strongly encouraged to begin a conversation right away.

Sign up now to be the first to receive exclusive previews and priority access to this upcoming release before the art fair launches at Carriageworks this September.

For acquisition enquiries, please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

Leading Australian contemporary artist Tamara Dean plunges the viewer into a blustery, dreamlike world with her new work, A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai/Wall), which will make its keenly awaited debut at Sydney Contemporary 2024.

While channelling the thematic currents that have long animated her practice, which delights in magnificent entanglements of human and natural worlds, this spectacular image also represents a bold new creative flight – one connected to a centuries-old lineage of iconic, elementally charged works by Hokusai and Jeff Wall.

Dean’s showing at Sydney Contemporary will arrive soon after her Supernatural exhibition at Michael Reid Berlin – the artist’s first solo presentation in the German capital – as well as an expansive installation at the world-famous outdoor photography festival La Gacilly Photo and a survey of early works on view at Michael Reid Murrurundi.

Those interested in discussing an acquisition can contact colinesoria@michaelreid.com.au 

At this year’s edition of Sydney Contemporary, the Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin installation will be anchored by a breathtaking collection of richly detailed paintings and soaring larrakitj by Djirrira Wunuŋmurra Yukuwa.

This monumental display will mark the celebrated Yolŋu artist’s first major release of new work since her acclaimed 2022 solo show at Michael Reid Sydney and arrives soon after her showing in the landmark exhibition Miwatj Yolŋu – Sunrise People at Bundanon.

Wunuŋmurra is among the most exciting voices to emerge in recent decades from the creative explosion at the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land. Held in major collections across Australia and abroad – including the Art Gallery of New South Wales – the artist’s work is distinguished by an uncommon meeting of two profoundly distinct stylistic approaches.

On the one hand, her art is grounded by the continuation of a sacred geometric clan design (Buyku), while on the other, it effects a declaration of self through a complex, personal floral motif (Yukuwa).

The Dhalwaŋu clan design of the Yirritja moiety, the Buyku miny’tji is an intricate diamond pattern – gridded, angular and mathematically precise. The design was given to the artist by her father, the renowned artist and Dhalwaŋu clan leader, Yaŋgarriny Wunuŋmurra, with whom she worked for many years.

When Wunuŋmurra’s right to paint Buyku was challenged by a family member, she chose a different motif representing one of her own names, Yukuwa. Sinuous, floral and fractal, the design refers to an endlessly unfurling yam flower on the vine. The annual reappearance of the yam symbolises the revitalisation of the people and their land.

Our art fair presentation spans the two expressions of Wunuŋmurra’s practice, Buyku and Yukuwa, inviting the viewer to comprehend ideas around identities within a Yolŋu philosophical framework.

To receive an early preview and priority access to the latest work by Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra Yukuwa, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au

At the 2024 edition of Sydney Contemporary, Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin will present a sublime new suite of etched-metal works by celebrated Yolŋu artist Gaypalani Wanambi.

The artist’s highly anticipated body of work is her first since being awarded this year’s Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize. It also follows her showing in the landmark Bundanon exhibition Miwatj Yolŋu – Sunrise People as well as her critically acclaimed, immensely popular solo show at Michael Reid Sydney, which was acquired in its entirety prior to opening.

Working at the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land, Wanambi is the pre-eminent female practitioner within the Found Movement, which sees salvaged metal road signs dazzlingly recast as raw material for extraordinary works of art.

While adhering to the Yolŋu law that art made about Country must use the materials of Country, her practice reflects a younger generation’s expanded conception of what this can encompass. In leading this exciting new wave of Yolŋu artists, Wanambi continues the legacy of her father – the late, great artist and advocate Mr. Wanambi – whom she assisted for many years.

Through her practice, Wanambi honours the songlines of the honey-hunting Wuyal, an important ancestral being of the Marrakulu clan. Tiny Dawurr (honey bees) repeat across her work’s cut-metal surface, producing intricately detailed, shimmering effects with rhythmic undulations.

We are excited to present a new series from an extraordinary talent whose recent accolades have been matched by the burgeoning collector excitement and institutional recognition surrounding her work.

To receive an early preview and priority access, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au