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Opening in late 2020, Michael Reid Northern Beaches presents the best of emerging art in Australia. Michael Reid Northern Beaches has expanded and evolved to become a robust, highly sought-after curated experience of high quality, collectible emerging art.

The gallery is curated and directed by Amber Creswell Bell, alongside our ceramics platform, Michael Reid Clay.

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The Sydney Edit

Happenings

Find out what's happening in the gallery this month

14—25 Nov 2024

David Griffith – Still life paintings — David Griffith

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14—29 Nov 2024

Joe Whyte – Roma — Joe Whyte

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21 Nov 2024

Clay Stockroom

Michael Reid CLAY is a gateway for inspiration, insights and the acquisition of collectable ceramic and pottery art.

Plan your visit

Located in Newport, a 45 minute drive from Sydney CBD, our Northern Beaches gallery is one street back from glistening Newport Beach.

Follow us @michaelreid.northernbeaches

NEXT WEEK: LEANNE HARRISON DAVIES | ‘Botanica’

NEXT WEEK: LEANNE HARRISON DAVIES | ‘Botanica’ | 28 November–9 December | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

A gorgeous abundance of elegantly arranged blooms has landed at Michael Reid Northern Beaches ahead of next week’s opening of our first solo exhibition for 2023 National Emerging Art Prize finalist LEANNE HARRISON DAVIES.

“The forms of nature are everything!” says Harrison Davies, who, in addition to her NEAP shortlisting, has been a finalist in the Mosman, Basil Sellers, Calleen and Gosford Art Prizes. “The intricacies, complexities and interconnectedness of all living things are my inspiration.”

Living and working on the South Coast of New South Wales and teaching painting at her studio in Berry, the artist was among the breakout stars of last year’s awards program. NEAP judge and Belle editor-in-chief Tanya Buchanan named the artist's work ‘Moonlight Rider’ among her favourite entries and featured it prominently in Belle's highlights from the 2023 show.

In the artist's exquisite new ‘Botanica’ series, a wild profusion of pretty petals and fecund, overlapping foliage is elegantly juxtaposed with a clean, pared-back compositional style whose formality and symmetry is a ballast for each picture’s spotlit centrepiece.

“Australian flora is especially enthralling to me and I explore the beauty of this extraordinary subject in my work,” says the artist, whose exuberant tangles of flannel flowers, waratahs, gum blossoms and wattle emerge in sumptuous, dusty velvet shades of green, blush, cream and crimson against inky, ambiguous, shadow-cast backdrops.

Half of the paintings comprising ‘Botanica’ have found homes with collectors well ahead of the exhibition’s opening at Michael Reid Northern Beaches – already a wonderful result for an artist showing solo with us for the first time and whose star is clearly on the rise.

Please visit our website to view and acquire works from the series or email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

@leanneharrisondavies

#leanneharrisondavies #leanneharrisondaviesart #leanneharrisondaviesartist #botantica #floralpainting #stilllife #floralstilllife #neap #nationalemergingartprize #michaelreidnorthernbeaches

NOW OPEN: LOUISE KNOWLES | Until 25 November | Mic

NOW OPEN: LOUISE KNOWLES | Until 25 November | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

A beautiful new suite of rhythmic and romantic abstract paintings by Northern Beaches-based artist LOUISE KNOWLES is now showing in our second exhibition space at Michael Reid Northern Beaches.

Channelling warm, rosy tones and windswept textures from the coastal landscapes that surround her, the artist's beautiful new series has been brought to life with elegant gestural swells of blush, peach and piercing sky blue.

Showing alongside the solo exhibition debut of Naarm/Melbourne-based still-life painter and 2023 NEAP finalist DAVID GRIFFITH, paintings from Knowles’s small but exquisite new release can be viewed and acquired at the gallery and online.

For enquiries, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

@louiseknowles.art

#louiseknowles #louiseknowlesart #louiseknowlesartist #contemporarypainting #abstractpainting #michaelreidnorthernbeaches

NOW OPEN: JOE WHYTE | ‘Roma’ | Until 29 Novemb

NOW OPEN: JOE WHYTE | ‘Roma’ | Until 29 November | The Garden Gallery

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present ‘Roma’, the solo exhibition debut of 2023 National Emerging Art Prize winner JOE WHYTE.

Now available to view and acquire online, Whyte’s dreamy and evocative series is showing throughout November at The Garden Gallery in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, where it will be welcomed with a public celebration this Saturday, 16 November, 1:30–3:30pm.

With ‘Roma’, the Naarm/Melbourne-based artist beautifully captures the imposing facades, jumbled rooftops and curiously emptied streets of the Italian capital just as twilight bathes the city in a golden-amber glow.

Whyte’s show is the culmination of a yearlong mentorship, which – together with an acquisitive $20,000 from Morgans Financial Limited – formed part of his suite of prizes when he won NEAP’s top honour in 2023.

Drawing on his time in Rome, the artist’s series magnificently expands the scope of his practice. Beguilingly devoid of inhabitants, each halcyon scene melds his enduring affinity for the urban realm with poetic reflections on the alienation these spaces can engender.

“Having grown up in Melbourne’s inner-city, I have long been inspired by its streets and architecture,” says Whyte, whose mastery of classical painting was honed with training in France after earlier studies at Monash University. “My work looks at the juxtaposition between the close proximity in which we live and the sense of isolation that often comes with life in cities.” Delving into this duality, Whyte’s intricately detailed oil paintings in rich, honeyed hues draw out the often overlooked narratives embedded in the built environment.

“The paintings document my search for an understanding of place and belonging while being very far from home,” says Whyte, who imbues each picture with warmth, poignancy and a sense of solitudinous contemplation that sits in quiet equipoise with the Eternal City’s grandeur.

For more, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

@joe_whyte_art
@botanicsydney

#joewhyte #joewhyteart #roma #neap #nationalemergingartprize #thegardengallery #michaelreidnorthernbeaches

NOW OPEN: DAVID GRIFFITH | ‘Still Life Paintings

NOW OPEN: DAVID GRIFFITH | ‘Still Life Paintings’ | Until 25 November | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Today, we are delighted to welcome to Michael Reid Northern Beaches the solo exhibition debut of Naarm/Melbourne-based painter DAVID GRIFFITH, who was among the standout finalists in the 2023 edition of the National Emerging Art Prize.

Simply titled ‘Still Life Paintings’, this series of gently transfixing tableaux lights on an array of quietly compelling, effortlessly composed clusters of bowls, bottles, bric-à-brac and fruit – all beautifully observed and brought to life with dusty jewel tones and an appealing interplay of soft light and sharp shadows.

Griffith describes these elegant oil paintings as being about “looking, searching, drawing, responding and painting,” building on the success of his NEAP-shortlisted work, ‘Studio Interior and Still Life’.

“My work uses well-known motifs as a vehicle to explore, uncover and deliver an honest and authentic painted mark that not only responds to my experience of deep looking,” says Griffith, “but also grapples with the two-dimensional rectangle that makes up the picture plane and the challenge, frustration and absurdity of painting itself.”

Griffith completed his art training in 1999 before being pulled into different pathways. But the call of painting endured over the subsequent two decades, and so, with a change of circumstances in mid-2022, he embarked on a serious and sustained studio-based painting practice that has now flourished since his selection for the National Emerging Art Prize.

“The painting is an examination of colour, form, weight and space, but also, more importantly, it’s about the process of painting itself,” says Griffith of his NEAP submission, which was guided by the slow, observational approach that also animates his latest series.

All works from ‘Still Life Paintings’ can be viewed and acquired online and at the gallery, where the exhibition is on view throughout November.

For more, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

@dav1dwg

#davidgriffith #davidgriffithart #davidgriffithartist #stilllifepaintings #stilllife #contemporarypainting #michaelreidnorthernbeaches

NOW OPEN: ANNARIE HILDEBRAND | ‘Transience Cubed

NOW OPEN: ANNARIE HILDEBRAND | ‘Transience Cubed’ | Until 29 November | The Garden Gallery

Michael Reid Clay is delighted to present ‘Transience Cubed’, the solo exhibition debut of 2023 National Emerging Art Prize winner ANNARIE HILDEBRAND.

Now showing alongside ‘Roma’ by JOE WHYTE at The Garden Gallery in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens and available to acquire online, Hildebrand’s series will be welcomed with a public celebration this Saturday, 16 November, 1:30pm.

The Eora/Sydney-based artist says her series emerged from a meditation on containment and transience – a duality made material through a dynamic interplay of squares, cubes and glazes that glisten like ice. Each sculptural piece is alive with playfully intersecting geometries in soft, blue-to-white gradations offset by glittering gold.

Hildebrand produced ‘Transience Cubed’ while completing a yearlong mentorship, which – together with an acquisitive $5000 donated by Morgans Financial Limited – formed part of the suite of prizes she received in 2023 for ‘ Castles in the Air’.

With their dance between structural form and figurative evanescence, the resulting vessels ask how we might frame our experiences, emotions and memories. “The square represents stability and order. The cube embodies volume, suggesting physical presence and the weight of limitation,” says Hildebrand, who has also been a finalist in the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize. “Ice, represented as a glaze material, introduces ephemeraity, challenging the permanence of the geometric forms.”

The altered states evoked by her work’s tonal shading and shimmering surface effects suggest an embrace of change. “I seek to capture the delicate balance between stability and change, inviting contemplation of our experiences of containment and letting go.”

We look forward to welcoming visitors to The Garden Gallery to explore ‘Transience Cubed’. To view and acquire works from the exhibition, please visit our website or email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

@annarie_h
@botanicsydney

#annariehildebrand #annariehildebrandart #annariehildebrandartist #transiencecubed #neap #nationalemergingartprize #michaelreidclay

THIS WEEK: DAVID GRIFFITH | ‘Still Life Painting

THIS WEEK: DAVID GRIFFITH | ‘Still Life Paintings’ | 14–25 November | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Arriving this week at Michael Reid Northern Beaches, ‘Still Life Paintings’ is the exquisite solo exhibition debut of 2023 National Emerging Art Prize finalist DAVID GRIFFITH.

Described by the Naarm/Melbourne-based artist as a series of works about “looking, searching, drawing, responding and painting,” this collection of elegantly composed, richly toned object studies can now be viewed and acquired online and at our Newport gallery.

Griffith completed his art school studies in 1999 before being pulled into different pathways and professions. The call of painting endured over the subsequent two decades, and so, with a change of circumstances in mid-2022, he embarked on a serious and sustained studio-based painting practice and has since amassed a series of accolades, including his NEAP shortlisting for ‘Studio Interior and Still Life’.

“The painting is an examination of colour, form, weight and space, but also, more importantly, it’s about the process of painting itself,” says Griffith of his successful NEAP submission, which was guided by the slow, observational approach that also animates his latest series.

“My work uses well-known motifs as a vehicle to explore, uncover and deliver an honest and authentic painted mark that not only responds to my experience of deep looking but also grapples with the two-dimensional rectangle that makes up the picture plane and the challenge, frustration and absurdity of painting itself.”

All works from ‘Still Life Paintings’ by David Griffith can be viewed and acquired online, and we look forward to welcoming visitors to the gallery to experience his wonderful paintings in person this weekend.

For more, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

@dav1dwg

#davidgriffith #davidgriffithart #davidgriffithartist #stilllifepaintings #stilllife #contemporarypainting #michaelreidnorthernbeaches

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