Home is Grace’s second solo exhibition with Michael Reid galleries & follows on from her sold out show Grace at our Northern Beaches gallery in February 2023.                                                                                                            

“Home is an exploration of what’s embedded in the objects around us. It is a collection of scenes that evoke the meaningful memories tethered to our homes. These paintings are composed to be a suggestion of what surrounds. With attention to colour and tone I’ve hoped to reflect a small part of a big scene, without the bounds of the canvas. It’s an entire bowl when only the edge can be seen, it’s a whole table setting shown by a glimpse of tablecloth, it’s a beautiful home in a simple image.I’m hoping this series can remind us its memories held in these small and seemingly mundane objects that create Home.” ~ Grace Butterfield 2023

Situated on the eastern outskirts of Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, the Iwantja Arts Centre at Indulkana, SA has always been an inventive platform for contemporary First Nations art. Beginning as a small communal printmaking facility, the vision of its founding directors has seen, almost fifty years later, Iwantja Arts at the forefront of local and international contemporary art discussion. In January 2024 Michael Reid Southern Highlands will exhibit new paintings by five artists, all of whom are instrumental in the collective success of Iwantja Arts.

Following her 2023 Hadley’s Art Prize win (Hobart, TAS), Yankunytjatjara artist Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan will exhibit alongside her mother, Emily Cullinan, who this year has presented exhibitions at Michael Reid Murrurundi and Michael Reid Northern Beaches. New and vibrant paintings by Raylene Walatinna will also exhibit, made following her appointment as a 2022 AGNSW Sulman Prize Finalist. (Raylene Walatinna was a finalist with Ngayuku Ngura – My Country, 2022, painted in collaboration with her mother, Betty Chimney). Rising new voice Rosalind Tjanyari joins our exhibition, alongside Priscilla Singer, an accomplished painter and daughter of Kunmanara (Sadie) Singer.

Then/Now/Always at Southern Highlands commences a full year of Iwantja Arts collaboration across the Michael Reid Gallery network. This exhibition also follows the 2023 release of IWANTJA, a major publication profiling the history of Iwantja Arts and artists. Copies of IWANTJA (Thames & Hudson) can be purchased ahead of our exhibition via the Southern Highlands online Concept Store.

For more information and pre-viewing opportunities, please contact danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au

Northern Rivers-based painter Lucy Vader transports us to halcyon days in sprawling pastures with her latest series, The Golden Hour. We are delighted to welcome this singular artist back to the Southern Highlands with the opening of her luminous new show in our upstairs gallery.

Depicting rolling paddocks dotted with grazing animals and happy birdlife, Vader’s pastoral scenes come flickering into view with dazzling exuberance as gutsy sweeps of paint break open to undercurrents of pure colour. These areas of neon-tinged abstraction appear like flashes of prismatic light in the landscape, as though refracted by clouds or washes of rain that soak the fields with lushness and vibrancy. For a moment, the figurative seems to glitch and give way to vivid, emotionally charged tonal undulations.

The Golden Hour is an expressive celebration of Vader’s home in Northern NSW, reflecting her complex relationship to an environment that can be, by turns, bucolic and wild, always subject to mercurial elemental shifts.

The sense that Vader’s landscapes are on the cusp of transformation is echoed by the energy and immediacy instilled by her gestural painting approach. Throughout The Golden Hour, the artist vividly captures precise points in time when the landscape is alive and the light becomes magical.

To speak with a Gallery representative about paintings in this exhibition, please email willkollmorgen@michaelreid.com.au

Sierra McManus graduated from the National Art School in 2002 with a major in painting. In 2016, on returning to the Bega Valley with its rich community of potters, her focus shifted to clay and her paintings took a new form. Using underglaze and oxides in place of watercolour and oils, her work now wrapped around her hand built functional and sculptural ceramic pieces. Having previously exhibited with Michael Reid’s Northern Beaches and Murrurundi Galleries, this is her first collection to be shown in the Southern Highlands.

Of the collection of vessels that make up ‘Matter & Memory’, Sierra says; “These vases are built from blended and reclaimed clays, each unique combination yielding its own form. The forms are painted with patterns, in iron oxide and underglaze, interpreted from cloths draped over chairs or hanging or lying about the studio. A vintage bed sheet sent to Phoebe from a friend in Tasmania or a curtain Melody had hung at Violet Hill. The patterns wrap themselves around the vase forms, bend and distort. In the end or where the pattern meets or a seam forms, the motifs confront themselves and a new pattern emerges. Recognition’s sparked – childhood sheets faded and flapping on the hills hoist, some special cloth folded away in a dark cupboard or a once loved shirt worn to exhaustion repurposed as ties to hold a tomato plant to its stake. Holding some common nostalgia, memories unfold invigorating new purpose.” – Sierra McManus 2023

Debbie Mackenzie is an artist residing on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. After studying Graphic Design and then following a career in advertising, Debbie embarked upon a journey into the romantic.  She quickly established herself as one of the most exciting emerging artists to watch and has gone on to be involved in countless sell-out solo shows and group exhibitions. Debbie ‘s work is largely about reverie, a sense of place and a desire to be there. Inspiration comes from Debbie’s childhood, spent on the Mornington Peninsula and holidaying at their century-old family beach house at Peterborough on the Great Ocean Road. These land and seascapes provide a rich and endless source of motivation. A John Leslie Art Prize Finalist in 2020 & 2018, The NEAP “ACB Selects” 2023 finalist. Debbie has exhibited in numerous successful solo shows and group exhibitions and has work in private collections around Australia and internationally.

“My practice revolves around my desire to capture the incredible beauty of the Australian landscape, both where I live and further afield. Returning to where I either have been or where my imagination takes me afterward.Away from the frenetics of modern living to the ease and gentleness of the landscape and all its contemplation.  I am uncontrollably immersed in these landscapes.  Chronicling my absolute captivation with the peace it brings me. My hope and motivation is that the viewer can feel that not just see it. To feel peaceful, we all need that!” ~ Debbie Mackenzie 2023

Lauren Jones is a visual artist based on the Sunshine Coast. Working primarily in oils, her still life scenes speak of moments captured in time. Lauren’s works, executed with immediate brushstrokes, are evocative and impressionistic. Her art showcases the materiality of paint and celebrates the process of painting through a delicacy and freshness rendered by the alla prima technique.

Born in 1989 in Queensland, Jones earned a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Literature) from the Sunshine Coast University in 2009, and in 2012 a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) from Monash University.
Lauren has shown at Michael Reid Northern Beaches over the last 2 years with her last exhibition, ‘Papaver’ April 2023 being incredibly well received with our collectors. Currently Jones works from her home studio in the Noosa Hinterland, Queensland. Her work is held in private collections across Australia.

“The paintings from ‘Postcards from the Museum’ are inspired by the late 19th century French artist Henri Fantin-Latour. I find myself drawn to 19th century European Still Life artists, mostly for their moody, atmospheric and textural flower paintings. Fantin-Latour’s work particularly stands out to me stylistically for being on the cusp of impressionism. I’m interested in the space between loose impressionism and realist tonal work. I like to see the workings and movement of the paint, but I’m also interested in capturing the light and trueness of shadow and tone.

This exhibition explores the idea of ‘inspiration’ and of artwork informing artwork. I love this hopeful notion of perpetually existing in the art world. Of new paintings being inspired by old paintings and the relationship of the modern and the old world.
As an art school student I was often in awe at the old masters paintings while wandering around gallery museums. Filled with inspiration, I would always visit the gift shop on my way out the gallery, wanting to take home some token to remind me of my experience and the paintings that moved and inspired me. A postcard of a painting, (the most affordable item) was a popular choice. This show explores that idea of an admired artist’s painting, printed on a postcard, purchased and kept as a reminder of the lived and experienced ‘inspiration’. A small token of an old master painter inspiring and influencing a new series of paintings in a contemporary era and in turn these new works perhaps informing another.” ~ Lauren Jones 2023

Lily Platts captures the forgotten items of the everyday. She is drawn to highlighting objects in transitional environments, such as on the side of the road, at a garage sale, an op shop, or on an online marketplace.

The series focuses on the beauty and humanity found within these neglected objects. The finely balanced yet intriguing compositions showcase the unique stories within these scenes, environments that we are familiar with but still seem slightly surreal. Lily has created 5 ceramic pieces to complement her Special Release of paintings at Michael Reid Southern Highlands.  They continue her theme of  household items being tossed kerbside, with chairs in particular being a recurring muse.

Platts is a visual artist living and working on Ngunnawal land. Through her subject matter she explores themes and nuances of the everyday. Platts was a recipient of the 2020 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship after graduating with Honours from RMIT, Melbourne in 2019 and from ANU in 2017.

Holly Dormor is a multidisciplinary artist working in Sydney NSW. In recent years she has turned her attention to painting, primarily within the still life genre. Holly is a current finalist in the National Emerging Art Prize 2023 and the Hunter’s Hill Art Prize 2023. With a strong interest in sculpture, she was a finalist in the 2015 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. Holly holds a BA in Media, Arts & Culture and studied Fine Art at Sydney’s National Art School. Her work is held privately throughout Australia. Holly has maintained her art practice alongside a twenty year career in television production with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

For Holly’s first showing with Michael Reid, ‘It Won’t Always Be Like This’ she has created eleven botanical works – each a study in light and transformation.
“As a marker of time & space, light reveals an astounding variation of colour in an object providing warmth, weight and otherworldly contrasts. A leaf suddenly illuminated or a shadow curiously awash with colour, these are the moments I look for. Naturally, the light will change and the illusion will pass. This series honours that shift… resisting and remembering the crawl of daylight across a room.” – Holly Dormor

Sally Browne is a painter of still life and the natural environment working predominantly in watercolour and oils. She grew up in the UK and travelled through SE Asia before eventually settling in Sydney. Her work is an exploration of the order and wildness, the human-made and natural that are woven together in Sydney’s Inner West. Her work evokes an ephemeral and emotional world as seen through the eyes of a migrant now at home in the unique Australian light. Sally’s practice is centred around drawing and has evolved from her formal studies of surface pattern design, painting, printmaking and graphic design.

Of the watercolours created for this special release she says : “Last February I attended a drawing residency in Hill End with the National Art School, these paintings are my response to the magical landscape there. Some of these works were painted on-site and others have been reconstructed from sketch book studies back in the studio. The Australian bush is chaotic; I will sit and look in one spot for hours sometimes before I can find a way in and make my first mark, I enjoy the spontaneity of watercolour to describe the feeling of being amongst it, there is an energy to watercolour paint that is wild and untamed, just like my subject. Dappled sunlight, bursts of native wild flower, swimming in the green waters of the Turon River, red ochre soil and silvery gum leaves dancing in the breeze, the sound of silence – Hill End was a sensory delight that filled my creative cup to the max, and these light, joyful works capture the essence of time spent in a special, uniquely Australian place.” – Sally Browne

Canadian painter Gavin Lynch makes his Australian exhibition debut at Michael Reid in presenting a panoramic installation of eight individual landscape paintings. Arborarium is now showing and is a wonderful opportunity for Australian collectors to access the artist’s work locally.

Gavin Lynch is an artist in full control of his creative vision, whose gentle disruption of the landscape genre observes the role of painting in a digitally saturated world. Lynch’s articulation of North American landscapes is refreshingly original, and is a visual language achieved through a series of protracted studio methods. In each artwork, Lynch upheaves the landscapes that he paints, reassembles them, and reduces his compositions to planes of pattern and colour. Lynch approaches his paintings with a tessellated vision, drawing wonderful parallels to the digitally informed processes that inspire them.

Photography, field-trip sketches, and collage inform the artist’s final paintings, most of which depict his home province of Wakefield, Quebec. In the studio, brush, washes, masking and airbrush techniques are used, skilfully combined by Lynch to emulate the appearance of recognisable ‘real worlds’.

Gavin Lynch holds a BFA from Emily Carr University (2009) and a MFA from the University of Ottawa (2012). He is the recipient of awards and grants from various organisations, including the Canada Council for the Arts (2014), the Ontario Arts Council (2013) and the province of Ontario (2011).

In 2014 Lynch was a finalist in the RBC Painting Competition, which was exhibited at the Musée des Beaux Arts.  His work has been exhibited across Canada, featured in Canadian Art magazine and is in various permanent collections, including Air Canada, Simon Fraser University, TD Canada Trust and the City of Ottawa Permanent Collection.

Those interested in exploring more are invited to contact: danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au