Thick with texture and charged with feeling, Impasto brings together the works of Zaide Harker and Bernie Greaves, two contemporary painters who wield oil paint with a bold, sculptural intensity. In this dual presentation, gesture becomes language and surface becomes story, as each artist pushes the medium to its expressive limits.

For both Harker and Greaves, impasto is more than a technique. It is a way of seeing, processing and communicating. Paint is not smoothed or restrained; it is piled, sculpted and pushed to the very edges of the canvas, commanding attention and offering a distinctly physical experience of looking.

Zaide Harker, a 2024 National Emerging Art Prize finalist, delivers works that pulse with urgency and lived experience. Their heavily worked canvases speak to themes of identity, imperfection and transformation, shaped in part by the artist’s own diagnosis of Huntington’s Disease and a long history within the disability support community. Here, oil paint becomes something more than pigment and binder. It is movement, resistance, memory. Harker’s impassioned mark-making transforms limitation into power, and fragility into force.

Bernie Greaves, currently based in London, approaches the canvas with a designer’s eye and a painter’s instinct. Drawing from Sydney’s urban and coastal fringe, Greaves’ compositions capture the often-overlooked lyricism of suburbia: terrace houses, telegraph poles, the unmistakable silhouette of a palm tree. His background in architecture is present not in rigid precision but in the bones of the compositions. The joy lies in how he builds upon these forms with lush, layered applications of colour. Each painting is a portal into a world where detail and delight coexist.

Together, these artists celebrate the emotional and material weight of paint itself. Impasto is an exhibition of surface and depth, control and chaos. It is a testament to the enduring power of gesture in contemporary painting.

Thick with texture and charged with feeling, Impasto brings together the works of Zaide Harker and Bernie Greaves, two contemporary painters who wield oil paint with a bold, sculptural intensity. In this dual presentation, gesture becomes language and surface becomes story, as each artist pushes the medium to its expressive limits.

For both Harker and Greaves, impasto is more than a technique. It is a way of seeing, processing and communicating. Paint is not smoothed or restrained; it is piled, sculpted and pushed to the very edges of the canvas, commanding attention and offering a distinctly physical experience of looking.

Zaide Harker, a 2024 National Emerging Art Prize finalist, delivers works that pulse with urgency and lived experience. Their heavily worked canvases speak to themes of identity, imperfection and transformation, shaped in part by the artist’s own diagnosis of Huntington’s Disease and a long history within the disability support community. Here, oil paint becomes something more than pigment and binder. It is movement, resistance, memory. Harker’s impassioned mark-making transforms limitation into power, and fragility into force.

Bernie Greaves, currently based in London, approaches the canvas with a designer’s eye and a painter’s instinct. Drawing from Sydney’s urban and coastal fringe, Greaves’ compositions capture the often-overlooked lyricism of suburbia: terrace houses, telegraph poles, the unmistakable silhouette of a palm tree. His background in architecture is present not in rigid precision but in the bones of the compositions. The joy lies in how he builds upon these forms with lush, layered applications of colour. Each painting is a portal into a world where detail and delight coexist.

Together, these artists celebrate the emotional and material weight of paint itself. Impasto is an exhibition of surface and depth, control and chaos. It is a testament to the enduring power of gesture in contemporary painting.

Over the course of two decades, Jessie Breakwell has refined a visual language rooted in her admiration for Brett Whiteley and Henri Matisse. But the distinctiveness of her work lies in its synthesis of personal history and far-flung influence—most notably her father’s years in Uruguay and her own travels across South America. The vibrancy of the region, its colours and cultural traditions, weaves through her compositions, infusing them with a grounded warmth that offsets their bold formalism.

The foundation for Breakwell’s artistic sensibility was laid early. Her childhood home was a world of intricate surfaces—her mother’s jewellery and fabric designs featured pelts, beaded textiles, and richly layered materials. These tactile beginnings shaped her understanding of texture and form, elements that remain central to her practice today.

In The Fabric of Faces, this legacy manifests in portraits that reward a slow and deliberate engagement, drawing viewers closer with their layered simplicity. Faces become vessels for presence, emotion, and ambiguity—less about likeness than a kind of psychic imprint. Breakwell’s stylised figures, often flattened and monumental, resist narrative and flirt with the ceremonial. Eyes are wide, often hollowed of light, inviting scrutiny while withholding clarity. Her compositions evoke both folk traditions and ancient forms, distilling something timeless and elemental. These are works that hum with quiet intensity, portraits that stare back—imbued with the quiet drama of being seen.

The luminous canvases of Shimmering Country, the forthcoming major showcase from the Artists of Ampilatwatja, extend a vibrant legacy of storytelling and kinship. Building on the critical success of Edie and Her Daughters, this new body of work features Joyrene Ngwarraye Holmes, Edie Kemarre Holmes, Kindy Kemarre Ross, and Jessie Ngwarraye Ross. It delves again into the intricate ties between cultural heritage, personal memory, and the resplendent landscapes of Central Australia.

The Artists of Ampilatwatja are renowned for their vivid depictions of flowering plants, expansive blue skies, and verdant plains. Their canvases, alive with intricate dot patterns and radiant colour, offer an overhead perspective of their landscape, a distinctive feature of their work. This aerial view not only maps the physical characteristics of their environment but also charts the cultural and botanical knowledge embedded within it. Plants such as kwenkart (turkey bush), therrpeyt (native fuchsia), and ntang (edible seeds), used for Arreth (strong bush medicine), are woven into the fabric of these paintings, reflecting their millennia-old importance as healing resources.

Deborah Michell-Smith’s The Pattern of Birds is an evocative exploration of regional Australia, where birdlife anchors the vastness of the outback. Her works are both homage and observation, distilling the quiet grandeur of the bush into layered textures and nuanced tones.

A solitary Brolga stands poised within a quilt of pinks and ochres, its form embodying both fragility and resilience—qualities intrinsic to life in remote settings. In another scene, Kookaburras perch on weathered branches, their feathers blending seamlessly into the rhythmic geometry of the landscape. These images are as much about space and stillness as they are about life, offering a sense of harmony between Australia’s birdlife and its terrain.

“Birds, as symbols of freedom, move effortlessly through these environments, embodying the deep connection between land and life,” Michell-Smith reflects. Through her precise brushwork and a restrained yet expressive palette, she invites viewers to linger in the resilience and beauty of the bush. Each painting is a quiet meditation on nature’s persistence and its poetic, enduring rhythms.

“Sky bright & colourless with promise of day, contests the cool air and dark shadows. Houses, partially hidden, stand tall—quietly watchful as boats, tension broken, wiggle with windows winking. Trees, their branches dipping, anticipate sun’s first tickle. And in waters green all this is seen, a moment, reflected, remembered, and held with in the Phthalo”.

Using a painting knife and oil, Miranda Joy Summers captures the essence of water and land, the interplay between soluble and solid matter. Her knife strokes are deliberate and expressive, shaping the scene through tone and form. She emphasises the dynamic interplay between negative and positive space, creating a unique dialogue between the foreground and the perceived distance, effectively reducing spatial separation. This technique challenges conventional perceptions of landscape painting, inviting viewers to engage with both the foreground and distance in a similarly subjective way.

In ‘Tracing Stillness’, Georgie Kite presents a contemplative body of work that explores the landscape not as a static subject but as something experienced through quiet, sustained attention. Since relocating to Yuin Country in 2016, Kite has immersed herself in the rhythms of the coastal environment. This lived engagement informs her distinctive visual language, shaped not by dramatic vistas but by the slow unfolding of detail.

Drawing on a background in photomedia and literature, Kite’s practice is grounded in observation and reflection. Her paintings develop gradually, layering colour, form, and texture to create surfaces where motifs such as vessels, headlands, and native flora seem to emerge and recede. These works are less representations of place than meditations on how place is perceived — how time, weather, light, and mood shift the way we see and understand the world around us.

In this context, “stillness” becomes a mode of heightened awareness

In her latest series I carry you with me, Melbourne-based artist Clare Dubina continues her quiet, confident exploration of the female form—its gestures, silhouettes, and the emotional weight carried in its negative spaces. Known for her warm, earthy palette and a practice that spans painting and ceramics, Clare’s work evokes a sense of organic simplicity, where every curve and texture feels both intentional and intuitive. 

Born in 1977 to a British mother and Sri Lankan father, Clare graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of the Arts in 2001. However, it wasn’t until 2020 that she returned to her sketchbooks—originally filled during her university years, when her senior thesis focused on the female form—and began to shape the foundations of her current art practice. In the years between, Clare carved a varied creative path, working across fashion photography and retail design around the world. These formative experiences are still present in her work today, seen in the compositional awareness, the attention to surface, and the way her pieces seem to belong in both the home and the gallery space.

Clare’s paintings are loosely planned—sketched in advance with a strong sense of colour palette and form. “If I overthink as I’m drawing, I lose the organic markings and shapes my hands naturally want to create,” she explains. The result is a conversation between control and intuition, between stillness and movement.

Despite her quiet humility, Clare’s work has captured wide attention. Her previous series have sold out before reaching gallery walls, and her collaborations with Australian design names such as Viktoria & Woods and En Gold have only broadened her audience. Still, she remains grounded in the quiet rituals of making. Her studio—a small, light-filled space in a Brunswick warehouse—is both practical and personal. “It’s most likely going to stay in the practical state of white walls and bare concrete floors,” she says.

Clare’s inspirations range from the photographic simplicity of Edward Weston and Bill Brandt to the layered abstraction of Serge Poliakoff, and she’s equally drawn to the unexpected: a shadow across a wall, the way skin folds echo petals, or the tactile pleasure of running her fingers over a plant leaf. A trained printmaker, she brings a deep respect for surface and material to every medium she touches.

In every brushstroke, curve, and line, Clare Dubina offers a space for that kind of quiet discovery—a body of work that, much like the artist herself, invites you to look again, and feel something more.

We are proud to announce ‘Light Colour Landscape’, our next banner exhibition at Michael Reid Southern Highlands. This significant presentation brings together eleven of Australia’s foremost contemporary artists, each deeply engaged with the Australian landscape. Their work explores its vastness, its changing light, and its rich textures, offering a diverse array of perspectives on this ever-evolving environment.

At the heart of the exhibition is a Mun-dirra (fish fence) by Jennifer Prudence, a Burarra fibre artist from Maningrida in Arnhem Land. Prudence’s work, created using pandanus she harvests and dyes with natural pigments drawn from her ancestral Country, is a powerful expression of connection to both land and culture. Her intricate weavings not only reflect the land’s rhythms and spiritual significance but also embody the knowledge and traditions passed down through generations. Prudence’s piece anchors the exhibition, grounding it in the profound, living relationship between people and place.

‘Light Colour Landscape’ unites both familiar and first-time voices to our audience, each contributing a unique and essential perspective. Through a range of mediums — from painting to fibre, ink to etching, and clay to mixed media — these artists engage in a collective dialogue with the land, its light, its memory, and the shifting ways in which we experience it.