Opening Night is the first body of work created in Andrea Huelin‘s new Melbourne Studio, worlds away from the tropical climes of Cairns, where she previously based her practice. For an artist so attuned to the nuances of light, it feels entirely natural that this change of scenery can be felt in Huelin’s newest paintings.

In this exhibition, little ensembles of eclectic vessels, glassware and tchotchkes gleaned from inner-city op-shops appear awash with the ambient glow of vintage table lamps, set agains thick, velvety curtains in cloistered nighttime settings.

The result is a fabulous air of theatricality that’s reflected in this exhibitions title. Where we were once used to observing spiky tangles of tropical flora, the melodramatic nocturnes of Opening Night present elegant masses of gladioli, orchids and other blooms that the viewer might imagine being heaped on the thespian’s dressing table after a standing ovation.

This is Andrea Huelin’s first solo exhibition at Michael Reid Southern Highlands. For information on paintings available to acquire, please contact danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au. An exclusive preview catalogue can also be downloaded here.

Titled “Autumn Fruit and Foliage,” this small offering of six perfectly composed, beautifully resolved still-life paintings marks Louise Anders’ first new release at the gallery in over a year. This collection follows her shortlisting in the prestigious 2023 Lester Art Prize.

Trained in classical painting and drawing methods, Louise’s artistic journey began in 2015 when she left a decade-long career as a scientist to pursue her passion for art. She later completed her studies at the Grand Central Atelier in New York under Jacob Collins. Collins’ style of classical realism—which enshrines the representational mode of Dutch (and broadly Northern European) vanitas—clearly influences her work.

Like Collins, Anders asserts the continuing value of traditional painterly precepts: close and direct observation of her subject, fidelity to the way things truly appear, and an almost scholarly focus on training and technique.

Having returned to her hometown of Adelaide, where she established a studio in the picturesque Adelaide Hills, Anders draws inspiration from her local environment and close observations of nature’s cyclical rhythms.

Observing buds bloom, blossoms transforming into fruit, and leaves fade and fall, she gathers these elements from her garden, capturing them from life and deftly rendering the intricate beauty of nature through a graceful interplay of light and shadows.

Works from “Autumn Fruit and Foliage” by Louise Anders are now available to acquire

Following the debut of Unfolding at Perth Council House Gallery, WA, Muddy Water is Carly Le Cerf’s first solo exhibition at Michael Reid Southern Highlands. Muddy Water is an epic painterly tribute to the Pilbara, capturing its breathtaking topography with dynamic gestural forms, textural details and vivid earth tones.

“Arranging elements within each panel guides the eye, conveying a sense of vastness,” says Le Cerf, who begins each work by immersing herself in the landscape and translating the emotions that arise. “My aim is to allow viewers to visually ‘walk through’ the landscape.”

The power of the artist’s paintings derives in part from her attention to materiality, which simultaneously evokes the environment’s granular, gritty detail while zooming out to convey its vast, heroic, elemental heft. “Using encaustic – a medium of beeswax, pigment and damar resin – adds tactile and sensory dimensions to my work,” says Le Cerf.

“I strive to not only replicate visuals but also evoke the emotional and sensory aspects of the landscape, exploring my relationship with it,” says the artist, who begins each series by immersing herself in the landscape, recording her time in the field with sketches and colour swatches that translate her emotional response. “My aim is to convey the awe I felt as the morning sun bathed the landscape.”

Muddy Water is on view in our top floor gallery at Michael Reid Southern Highlands until Tuesday, 25 June.

Llael McDonald, a seasoned artist with over twenty-seven years of experience, paints meditative still-life works that honour the classical genre of vanitas. The pieces that form Savour – her latest solo offering for Michael Reid Southern Highlands – are appropriately characterised by their moody and introspective tone.

Across eleven oil paintings, Llael depicts lusciously formed fruits, flowers, and fine china, set before darkened tonal grounds. A Baroque sensibility is achieved in the artist’s deft balancing of light, as well as her rigorous commitment to attaining an exact likeness of her subjects. But the artist’s works, while indebted to a movement that took form centuries ago, are not maudlin advertisements for the inexorable passage of time. They are bursting with life and rejoice in the quiet, often dramatic beauty of simple things.

There is a filmic, soft-brushed surface quality to Llael’s ten pieces in Savour – achieved by the artist’s slow, almost meditative, painting process. One senses that Llael takes a certain refuge in art-making – it’s promise of long, uninterrupted periods of focus and attention. Indeed, when she describes Savour as a “ celebration of the power of food to unify” – the image of a dining table is conjured: another ritual that, like art making, offers a chance of reprieve from the din and distractions of our daytime lives. 

For such compressed and spare compositions, the pieces in Savour continue to offer up new, surprising details to the returning viewer – such that her masses of brushwork harbour small images likely missed on first glance. 

Llael’s work appears in collections across Australia and internationally (England, France and USA). She now has a studio in the Victorian highlands where she continues her painting practices.

Walking through the home of this Southern Highlands collector is to embark on a passage from the original heritage architecture of the front (central dormer window, high-pitched galvanized iron roof, bull-nosed verandah) to a more modern, minimalist arrangement in the rear, with an impressive vaulted ceiling and oversized south and west-facing windows.

This spanning of time and design sensibilities is also reflected in their art collection, which balances classical landscape pieces done in oils (judiciously selected from antiques stores) with contemporary works of figurative abstraction, held in spare, shadowbox frames.

Pairing new art acquisitions with antique works is a brilliant way to give context to your collection, to anchor emerging voices in the Australian scene with choice pieces from the turn of the century or earlier. A rich collision of styles can be struck, creating a potent record of changing values, from the academy style of yore to the expanded field of today.

It can also be a useful way of seeing, on one wall, just how a contemporary artist borrows, and meaningfully departs from tradition, throwing their experimentations into even sharper relief.

Raised in Oakland California, Emily Gordon first moved to Australia in 2005 and now splits her time between downtown Sydney and Gunning NSW. Her limited-release cityscapes explore Sydney’s historic surrounds. Rhythm, light and pattern inform and elevate everyday moments, and the work allows viewers to share in her personal visual narrative. Emily is a represented artist with Michael Reid Northern Beaches, and ‘Higher Ground’ follows four sold out solo shows with the Michael Reid galleries. She is a finalist in the 2024 Ravenswood Art Prize, and previous finalist in the National Emerging Art Prize and Mosman Art Prize.

“Higher Ground is a re-examination of familiar surrounds – set on Gadigal Land in the heart of historic Sydney, the works explore a highly examined subject to unearth something new and special to share. The development of the series ran as a dual-process, delving into years of archival photography in the area, mining for untapped gems of inspiration, as well as scaling new heights to capture known vistas from a fresh aspect.

There is compounded meaning in higher ground: when seeking a new perspective, the instinctual choice is to move physically upward, to take in broader surrounds. I explored elevated spaces within – and on top of – buildings and outlooks that brought entirely fresh entry to the subject matter that I have worked with previously (in spite of a crippling fear of heights).

We also head for higher ground seeking safety from danger, and there is an element of searching for respite from anxiety in familiar places, in calming rhythms and transcendent light. Diving back through my photo archives allows me to be subsumed by the quest to find and translate beautiful moments from my past personal narratives and share this sense of found peace.

Strategically, holding the high ground is advantageous, but I am more interested in the moral connotations. In my own seeking of higher ground, I have been undertaking an internal examination toward living in a more principled manner – a journey to better understand ethical precepts cultivated in parallel to these works, which ultimately cannot be divorced from the context of their production.”

~ Emily Gordon 2024

After being thrust into major art collector conversations in 2022, when the Art Gallery of NSW selected her as a finalist in both the Archibald Prize and Wynne Prize, Julianne Ross Allcorn returns to Michael Reid Southern Highlands with an exhibition of paintings conjuring magical impressions of the Australian landscape. In these utterly original works, charismatic critters are glimpsed through overlapping flora and wispy layers of eucalyptus against smatterings of glitter and areas of exposed plywood.

“From top to bottom, left to right, Allcorn’s paintings read as if you are standing within a grove of native trees,” writes Michael Reid OAM of the exquisitely layered thickets of Australian bush brilliantly conjured by the artist with her fine, wisp-like strokes and smatterings of gold-flecked magic.

To receive an exclusive preview or to arrange a viewing appointment at Michael Reid Sydney , please contact danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au