Mirage

Represented in the stable of our flagship Eora/Sydney gallery and announced last week as a finalist in this year’s Waverley Art Prize, contemporary painter Kathy Liu will make her Newport gallery debut next month with Mirage. Now available to preview and acquire by request, the rising art star’s forthcoming exhibition follows a much-admired trifecta of large-scale presentations at Michael Reid Sydney, including her entirely sold-out 2025 solo debut and her celebrated showing in the 2024 edition of the gallery’s annual Painting Now program. Since her breakout turn as a National Emerging Art Prize finalist, Liu has garnered acclaim for a distinctive, intuitive approach to abstract painting that remains porous to chance possibilities. Suggesting hazy memories, nocturnal musings or half-remembered dreams, her paintings pulse with poeticism, emotion and effervescent movement.

“I found these paintings are more playful, perhaps reflecting hazy memories of my childhood. The orange sunlight that casts long shadows over the ground in the northern cities of China, the afternoons spent happily playing after school, the time I stood on the balcony watching the thunderstorms, counting each flash of lightning, when I would walk slowly with my grandma to the nearby market. The cool summer nights listening to the song of the frogs. All of these are only potential narratives that I drew from my pictures. Like mirages, audiences might have their own interpretations.”

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