Program Highlights
- India Mark, Evan Shipard, Vicki Potter, Nancy Pitjara Frank, Stacey Mrmacovski, Peta West, Julianne Ross Allcorn
Across the Top, Mezzanine and Ground Floors, Michael Reid Southern Highlands showcases a diverse program of Australian art, reflecting a breadth of practice, medium and perspective.
The works presented here — by India Mark, Evan Shipard, Vicki Potter, Diane Kemarre Ross, Beverley Pula Luck, Stacey Mrmacovski, Julianne Ross Allcorn and Peta West — comprise a tightly curated grouping, selected to highlight the range and depth of the gallery’s current program.
Archibald finalist Evan Shipard will make his exhibition debut with Michael Reid with a new body of Southern Highlands landscapes, centred on Berrima and its surrounds. Shipard works between the studio and the open air, chasing the fugitive moments that remake a place — the pearl-grey hush of dawn, the heat-drained tones of late afternoon, the mirrored stillness of water at dusk.
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India Mark’s works are painted from life, often staged within a small diorama in her studio, where compositions are constructed much like scenes in a play. Lighting is controlled, colours tested, elements introduced and removed. Through this process of reduction, she seeks what she calls “the impact of simplicity”, treating space, shadow and object as equally active presences within the frame.
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The Artists of Ampilatwatja are renowned for their vivid depictions of flowering plants, expansive blue skies, and verdant plains. Their canvases — alive with intricate dotting and radiant colour — often adopt an aerial perspective of Country, a defining feature of their visual language. This elevated viewpoint maps not only the physical contours of the land, but also the cultural and botanical knowledge held within it.
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Across vast linocuts, carved line by line over hundreds of hours, Peta West renders the landscape with masterful precision. “I’m constantly searching for ways to carve the landscape with depth,” West says, “so that when you look at the work, you feel as though you could step right into the reimagined vista before you.”
Her latest works were shaped after travelling through Central Australia, where studies of flora and topography became the foundation for these intricate, reimagined terrains — rolled by hand in Prussian blue ink onto fine Japanese paper. The result cements West as one of the foremost printmakers working in Australia today.
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Stacey Mrmacovski’s use of impasto – the technique of applying thick, textured layers of paint – transforms the canvas into a terrain of intricate peaks and valleys. The surface becomes almost sculptural, the paint whipped and sliced into place with a confidence that belies its apparent chaos.
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Vicki Potter’s work begins in the landscape but resists straightforward representation. Impressions of movement, light and distance are filtered through an intuitive process. There are no fixed subjects here; the interest lies in how the image is constructed and what it might hold.
“Walking is central to my practice,” Potter says. “It is how I gather sensory impressions and bear witness to the ephemeral: the shifting path of a flock of birds, the imprint of a well-travelled footpath, or the brief impression of waves on sand.”
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Working in watercolour and pencil on birch wood, Wynne Prize-finalist Julianne Ross Allcorn builds her scenes from the close looking she does outdoors — the notations, field drawings and colour tests that fill her journals. Thin, translucent passages of paint sit over the grain, while areas of birchwood are left visible, like clearings in the foliage.
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