Sydney Contemporary 2025: Painting

This year’s Sydney Contemporary presentation from Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin brings together an exciting assembly of contemporary painters whose technical mastery, searching intelligence and conceptual daring carry art’s most storied medium into new and innovative terrain.

The exhibition marks the Sydney Contemporary debut of two major talents who both joined our stable of represented artists in April this year after previously gaining widespread attention as finalists in the National Emerging Art Prize. Naarm/Melbourne-based Indian Australian artist Sid Pattni, a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, arrives at the fair on the heels of his first solo exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney, The Act of Putting it Back Together, which was widely acclaimed and acquired in its entirety well before the opening. Pattni is joined by Eora/Sydney abstract painter Kathy Liu, who has emerged in recent years as one of the most admired and closely watched figures within the Michael Reid network and was recently announced as a finalist in the 2025 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award at Campbelltown Arts Centre.

Accompanying Pattni and Liu are two of the most impressive, distinctive interpreters of the Australian landscape working today. Celebrated West Australian artist Carly Le Cerf returns to Sydney Contemporary after a succession of major career triumphs and a creatively pivotal Blue Mountains residency, while Dyarubbin/Hawkesbury-based painter Julz Beresford presents her first full-scale series of monumental mountainscapes in a rotating exhibition unfolding over the course of the art fair.

Rounding out our contemporary painting survey are Meanjin/Brisbane-based still-life master John Honeywill and Muloobinba/Newcastle multidisciplinary artist Michelle Gearin, whose presence at Sydney Contemporary coincides with her latest solo exhibition, I’ll Be Your Mirror, at Michael Reid Sydney.

To discuss works from our contemporary painting survey, please email hughholm@michaelreid.com.au