Hannah Bernadette is a self-taught visual artist based on Awabakal Country (Newcastle) whose practice explores the intimate relationship between the body, emotion and the environment. Trained as a physiotherapist, her dual careers are united by a deep curiosity for the body – its sensations, memory and the influence of the nervous system on perception and experience.

Her latest body of work, Body Talks, emerged from a transformative free-diving trip, where immersion in the ocean revealed unexpected depths, both physical and emotional. In surrendering to the water and listening to her body’s signals, Bernadette found a new way of painting: looser, more intuitive, and charged with presence. The result is a series of bold, abstract works that reflect the rhythms of breath, movement and nervous system states.

Bernadette’s background in physiotherapy – particularly her work with individuals navigating chronic pain – has sharpened her sensitivity to the body’s silent language. Her painting practice has become both an extension of this knowledge and a form of somatic inquiry. It is a space for release, reflection and reconnection, where intuition overrides control and colour becomes a tool for translation.

Working primarily on heavy canvas with acrylics, oil paint and oil pastels, she builds layered compositions through gestural mark-making and vivid contrasts. Each work pulses with energy, inviting the viewer to slow down, drop in and attune to the body’s intelligence. In Body Talks, Bernadette explores what becomes possible creatively and emotionally when we listen from within. Her work invites a return to vitality, to presence and to the full spectrum of being alive.

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present The Fountain – a sublime and expansive new body of work by Bundjalung/Northern Rivers-based contemporary painter Kathryn Dolby. The opening of Dolby’s latest solo exhibition coincides with the exciting announcement of her representation by Michael Reid Northern Beaches.

Taking an intuitive, playful and emotionally charged approach to colour and line, Dolby creates psycho-geographic paintings of the landscapes surrounding her. Through gesture and abstraction, her landscapes explore the connections between the subconscious, the everyday and the sublime.

“The Fountain builds on my desire to find an interesting intersection between abstraction and representation,” says the artist, whose elegant and expressive paintings beautifully balance the intimately personal with the grandly transcendent: moments of tension and release, detail and dissipation, quiet poeticism and dramatic flourish. “I hone in on considered detail and abstract it through expressive gestures. It’s a push and pull sensation of drawing in and releasing out.”

Dolby maps this push-pull dynamic onto her process of drawing from memory, letting the mind’s eye’s haziness, abstractions and misrememberings inform the resulting pictures. “What you’re left with evokes more of a feeling than a clear scene,” she says. “There is a grappling with the unknown in these paintings … the more simplified and pared back the compositions are, the more the paintings begin to lift off into something new.”

While bringing her new series to life, Dolby became interested in The Fountain as a capacious metaphor, with its various meanings seeming apt to describe the many currents that move through her paintings. “Fountains throughout art history have symbolised rebirth, healing, holy water, the uncontrollable forces of nature and the human experience,” she says. “It’s a flow of water in constant transition between here and there. Like ourselves, moving through life, shifting, changing. The elements mirror this also and continue to reappear in my paintings as a dance with colour.”

All works from The Fountain can be explored and acquired below or by request ahead of the exhibition’s official opening on Thursday, 5 June. Kathryn Dolby is represented by Michael Reid Northern Beaches.

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

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to welcome a dazzling new instalment in Eora/Sydney artist Daniel Shipp’s decade-spanning Botanical Inquiry project with the arrival of his latest photographic series, Super Nature.

“Constructed from live plants and lit in the studio, the images are staged against a large photographic backdrop and captured in a single camera exposure,” says Shipp, whose moody and fabulously atmospheric floral fantasias were first seeded by his research into 19th-century botanical drawings. “They are cinematic illusions, produced using an antiquated analogue ‘machine’ technique first developed in the 1940s, which I’ve rebuilt, adapted and integrated into a digital workflow.”

Departing from the more exotic and romanticised visions of his earlier homages to botanical drawings, Shipp’s lushly evocative photographs respond to his discomfort with the algorithmic systems that increasingly mediate our perceptions, behaviour and lived experiences. “Reflecting complexities that extend beyond their frame, these images explore the antagonism between algorithmically constructed realities and spiritual authenticity,” says the artist, who gleans his wild and weedy plant samples from between the cracks of public space and envisions them looming large over the urban domain.

“The plants are often constructed hybrids, posed in exaggerated ways that defy the laws of nature. These forms suggest a quiet disturbance, performing an idea of nature we want to trust – but also suggesting that we shouldn’t.” By blurring boundaries between the natural and synthetic within the framework of traditional botanical illustration and classification, Shipp examines how we shape technology – and how it, in turn, reshapes us.

“I’m speaking to a broader anxiety: that the tools designed to enhance our experience of living are also contributing to social fragmentation, disconnection and a loss of meaning,” he says. “Visually, the images echo the exaggerated flourishes and heightened aesthetic found in AI-generated imagery, yet they are crafted through a deeply physical, analogue process. They resist the seamless veneer of machine-made imagery, embracing instead the imperfections and incidental artefacts inherent in physical processes.”

To enquire about works from Botanical Inquiry: Super Nature by Daniel Shipp, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

In 2023, Xanthe Muston had the opportunity to view a retrospective of Edvard Munch’s work. In Munch’s surreal scenes, Nature is portrayed with intense drama, often rendered with more character than the human figures, who appear diminished beside towering, cliff-like trees and swirling clouds. Muston’s painting The Seasons reimagines Munch’s The Dance of Life. In her composition, Munch’s southern Norwegian coast is replaced with an Australian beach. The women from the original painting—commonly interpreted as representing the stages of female vitality and life—are reimagined as the figure of Persephone, who watches over two dancers whose movements cast dramatic shadows. Another work, Blue and Yellow, references Munch’s Red and White, presenting two figures in a sleepless, dreamlike scene. What ties these works together is a shared exploration of private introspection and the longing for connection during pale, moonlit nights, when the full moon casts fantastical shapes across the landscape.

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is thrilled to present The Courage Tree by Drew Truslove, an exhibition that delves into the nuanced beauty of the bushland the artist calls home. “Standing on one rock or patch of grass, I draw the views from different angles around that point, providing a unique view of how truly beautiful and diverse an individual spot can be,” says the artist, describing the immersive approach through which he creates intricate, multi-perspective compositions that celebrate both the individuality and interconnectedness of the landscape. Working exclusively with black or blue ink, Truslove forgoes traditional hues to evoke the essence of his surroundings. “Rather than trying to match the hues and tones of the bush, the ink provides an impression of the landscape, revealing its beauty with one single colour,” he says. His drawings are rich with texture and density, inviting viewers to see the bush through a fresh, distilled lens.Drew Truslove Catalogue

To enquire about works from The Courage Tree by Drew Truslove, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present our first solo exhibition from Boorloo/Perth-based Australian/Filipina multidisciplinary artist Sherry Quiambao, who arrives at our Newport gallery with a suite of bold and brilliant photographs from her series Veiled in Bloom.

First capturing the attention of our curatorial team after a glowing endorsement from fellow photographer Petrina Hicks – one of the country’s most acclaimed contemporary artists and a major star in our flagship Eora/Sydney gallery’s stable – Quiambao’s work recasts ordinary and emblematic objects in playfully constructed tableaux that delve into the intersections of cultural identity, consumerism and belonging.

“My cultural identity is central to my practice,” says Quiambao, who has exhibited widely since completing her Bachelor of Arts in Sculpture at Curtin University, including at Perth Centre for Photography, the Australian Embassy in the US and at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery as part of last month’s Perth Festival. “This sense of being ‘in-between’ – never fully belonging here nor there – resonates in my work, where objects and their relationships suggest longing, resilience and reconnection.”

Exploring tensions between aspiration and humility, care and disposability, tradition and modernity, works from Quiambao’s Veiled in Bloom series present bright, sky-blue backdrops as a poppy foil for mundane and reimagined objects: flower vases made from fast-food packaging, pearls draped over plastic containers, and pencils puncturing a cluster of fruit. “These works examine how societal pressures and material culture shape our identities, with objects serving as conduits for reflection,” says the artist, whose vibrant update on the photographic still-life cleverly subverts the slick visual language of advertising to muse on materialism’s effects.

“I love experimenting with assemblage and composition, trying to create arrangements that feel both intentional and a little bit whimsical,” says Quiambao. “I find a lot of inspiration in old homewares magazines and ads from the 1980s and 90s – it’s nostalgic, but there’s also something so captivating about the styling.”

All works from Veiled in Bloom by Sherry Quiambao are now available to explore and acquire online and have arrived at the gallery as the artist gears up for her upcoming PICA-supported BREEZE residency in Makassar, Indonesia.

To discuss works from the series and secure an edition, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present the latest solo exhibition from celebrated contemporary painter and National Emerging Art Prize winner Sophie Sachs. Titled All Glass, the Meanjin/Brisbane-based artist’s luminous new series is a beautifully realised exploration of light’s evanescent qualities and the delicate, serendipitous optical effects produced by light’s intersections with glass.

“These compositions always feature direct sunlight, as the shadows play an equally important role in the arrangement as the objects themselves,” says Sachs, who worked as a lead designer with Urban Art Projects in public art for five years after completing a Master of Architecture at the University of Queensland and now, since winning NEAP’s top honour, has devoted herself to full-time art practice.

“Each work references the still-life genre through the use of familiar and commonplace objects. However, the focus of my work is on capturing the optical effects of light and conveying the fleeting nature of the present moment.”

Sachs’s architectural training is evident in her work’s sense of order, which is appealing juxtaposed with sunlight’s ephemeral, unexpected effects – its dynamic pattern play, refracted colour and dancing shadows. This interplay between order and chance is echoed in her mix of precise figuration and backgrounds consisting of ambiguous pools of colour, freeing her compositions from the realm of domestic interiors and moving towards something abstract.

With All Glass, each painting is developed and experienced in two stages. “There is the overall sense of light and colour, which can be perceived at a glance,” says Sachs. “Then, there is the detail that is experienced at a much more intimate scale. My paintings do not seek to be extremely realistic. Rather, I selectively highlight details that inspire and interest me while allowing other elements to become more stylised and retain a painterly quality.”

To enquire about available works from All Glass by Sophie Sachs or sign up for early access to her upcoming releases, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

In Proximity to Home, the artist explores the intimate relationship between landscape and personal memory. The works in this exhibition originate from a trip to the Flinders Ranges, where the artist began “fracturing” the landscape, abstracting large natural forms and playing with the tension between detail and open space. The result is a body of work that examines the balance between form and void, color and simplicity. The artist’s signature graphic, mid-century aesthetic permeates these paintings, with flat planes of color punctuated by sharp contrasts and fragmented perspectives.

Each work in Proximity to Home speaks to the artist’s evolving relationship with the landscapes she paints. Some, like Fantasy Hills IX, offer a deeply personal reflection, with mountains cast as patriarchal figures, posing the question, “Who are you?” This act of psychoanalysing the landscape gives voice to her inner fears and revelations. Other pieces, such as Near San Remo, feel like milestones of personal growth, representing a resolution of internal conflict and a return to harmony.

At its core, Proximity to Home is a narrative of personal growth. It is an invitation to witness the artist’s psychological landscape unfold through the language of painting—finding healing, understanding, and joy in the creative process. 

My practice is process driven and painting has turned into a lifelong challenge by continuously aspiring to find rhythm and synergy on the canvas.

The intention when creating DUE NORTH has been to combine composition, tone and the application of paint so that I become completely immersed in the puzzle that is
painting. Each work in the series is vignetted by foliage predominantly from the bays and beaches north of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge. It is thrilling to stumble upon a view such as a Gum tree in nature at the right time of day where glimmering light falls perfectly on a branch, and then if I am able to use the action of just one brushstroke to captures this moment it brings me an enormous amount of satisfaction as an artist. I search for landscapes that are interesting to paint compositionally yet have familiar coastal shapes such as a palm tree contrasted with a sea of aquamarine.

Subjects such as the magnificence of a great Moreton Bay Fig that’s branches and roots lyrically show hundreds of years of growth history sat beside the emerald colours of Pittwater have captured my interest for DUE NORTH.

A dynamic assembly of some of the most acclaimed and influential names in Australian contemporary art is making a splash on the Northern Beaches with the latest edition in our ongoing series of group exhibitions co-curated by our flagship Eora/Sydney gallery.

Our second Sydney Edit for 2025 includes a spectacular pair of hyper-floral photographs from award-winning artist Tamara Dean’s new series, The Flower Duet – fresh from its glittering debut last month at Michael Reid Sydney.

Our Sydney Edit offers a rotating display of bold, beautiful and highly collectable art from the brilliant minds lighting up the Michael Reid stable and setting the pace for Australian visual culture. Conceptually striking, optically charged and brimming with colour, verve and a vivid sense of storytelling, these pieces promise to bring pace, panache and a bold point of focus to the interior spaces they inhabit.

This museum-level display has been specially conceived to complement the creative visions of the most innovative space-makers in Australia and beyond, from passionate private collectors to the architects and designers whose bold, evocative and directional interiors are reshaping luxury and the way we live now.

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

National Emerging Art Prize co-founder and curator Amber Creswell Bell has handpicked the most beautiful, eye-catching and collectable works from the 2024 awards program’s talent pool for a very special in-person edition of NEAP’s offshoot exhibition, ACB Selects – on view at Michael Reid Northern Beaches in early February 2025.

“One of the great thrills of curating the National Emerging Art Prize every year is reviewing each of the thousands of entries we receive,” says Amber, speaking with Australian House & Garden magazine for an editorial round-up featuring some of the most fabulous art to buy from our upcoming ACB Selects exhibition. “More often than not some will catch my eye that are overlooked by the judges. I trust my gut with these things … the ACB Selects exhibition is a celebration of my picks from the entries.”

NEAP’s 2024 edition received a record number of entries from almost 1700 rising art stars, resulting in a fabulous collection of original, affordable art that was too brilliant and bountiful to be contained within the program’s official exhibition. The strength of these submissions compelled Amber to expand NEAP’s annual offshoot, ACB Selects, turning this online salon des refusés into a specially curated group exhibition at Michael Reid Northern Beaches starring more than 30 up-and-coming painters and ceramicists.

Bringing together the best works of those not officially shortlisted by NEAP’s judging panel, ACB Selects offers first access to the next wave of creative talent. Numerous alumni from previous editions now enjoy successful exhibition careers across the Michael Reid network and beyond.

To request a preview catalogue and priority access to works featured in our ACB Selects exhibition and published in the January 2025 issue of House & Garden, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

Our final exhibition of 2024 is a radiant celebration of the year that was, offering a curated survey of new works by exceptional artists who have illuminated the Michael Reid program throughout the past twelve months. Summer Salon 2024 brings together a dynamic and diverse selection of paintings by Ella Holme, Ben Waters, Jen Rosnell, Lauren Jones, Nicola Woodcock, Melanie Waugh, Liam Power, and others, showcasing their unique voices and artistic visions.

From intimate scaled pieces that make the perfect gift for the art lover in your life, to striking, collectable works destined to bring originality and flair to any space, this exhibition offers something for every connoisseur. A vibrant and varied showcase of talent, Summer Salon 2024 is a reflection on the year’s creative highlights.

Living and working on the south coast of New South Wales, Leanne draws deep inspiration from the landscape that surrounds her, allowing the flora of Australia to become her primary subject. The lush textures, delicate forms, and the interplay of light and shadow within the leaves, flowers, and branches she paints speak to a profound connection between artist and environment.

Her work reveals the hidden complexities and interconnectedness of all living things. Through her careful observation of nature’s minutiae, she captures the quiet, yet profound moments where flora seems to come alive. Her oil paintings—layered to evoke mood and atmosphere—convey not just the visual essence of the subject, but its emotional resonance. For Leanne, the act of painting is a meditation on the beauty, fragility, and resilience of life itself.

“The forms of nature are everything! The intricacies, complexities and interconnectedness of all living things are my inspiration. Australian flora is especially enthralling to me and I explore the beauty of this extraordinary subject in my work. Close observation of the intimate forms of leaves, branches and flowers, and the play of light and shadow, is central to my process. I work in oil paint employing traditional techniques, layering paint to create mood and atmosphere.”

David completed art school in 1999 but then promptly got pulled into different pathways and professions. However, throughout the past two decades, art has always called to him, so after a change in life circumstances in mid-2022, he finally answered that call and embarked on serious and sustained studio-based practice.

Born 1977 Melbourne, he lives and works in Melbourne. David works in oils, watercolour and acrylics. Drawing is fundamental to his painted mark. He is interested in slow looking and exploring how we see, perceive and make sense of the world around us.

David has received multiple awards such as an Honourable Mention – Brunswick Street Gallery Fifty Squared Art Prize, Finalist in the National Emerging Art Prize, Online finalist (Salon des refuses) – Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award, all in 2023. David has been involved in many group exhibitions including ‘Where are we Now’, Gallery 5, Victoria in 1999 and the Graduate Exhibition, Monash University, Faculty of Art & Design, Victoria in 1998.

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present the solo exhibition debut of Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Joe Whyte, who was named the Overall Winner of the Morgans Financial Prize for an Emerging Painter at last year’s National Emerging Art Prize.

Titled Roma, Whyte’s dreamy and evocative new series of intricately detailed oil paintings captures the Italian capital’s emptied streetscapes and jumbled rooftops just as twilight bathes the cityscape in a romantic, golden-amber glow.

Drawing inspiration from his time based in Rome, the exhibition is the culmination of a yearlong mentorship with gallerist Michael Reid OAM, gallery director Toby Meagher and NEAP curator Amber Creswell Bell. Together with an acquisitive $20,000 donated by NEAP’s founding sponsor, Morgans Financial Limited, this professional development formed part of Whyte’s suite of prizes when he received NEAP’s top honour in 2023 for his work Above the Clouds.

Showing throughout November at The Garden Gallery in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, the resulting series dazzlingly dials up the scope of Whyte’s practice beyond the inner-city Melbourne landscapes for which he has previously been celebrated. Beguilingly devoid of inhabitants, his halcyon scenes meld an enduring affinity for the urban environment with poetic reflections on the sense of alienation these spaces can engender. By delving into the duality of proximity and isolation inherent to the urban experience, Whyte reveals the often-overlooked narratives embedded in our built environment, offering a poignant exploration of belonging and the complexities of life in a bustling metropolis.

“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 and drawing 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 distance and sense of isolation that so often comes with life in cities.”

“The paintings document my search for an understanding of place and belonging while being very far from home,” says Whyte, who imbues each masterful picture from his Roman holiday with emotional warmth, poeticism and a sense of gentle, solitudinous contemplation that sits in quiet equipoise with the city’s grandeur.

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

Owen Ratner’s exhibition Blue Tide draws inspiration from the structures he sees in and around his local area. While most scenes may not be recognisable as Pyrmont, it is elements of this harbourside enclave – pylons, silos, docks, wharves, industrial lighting, aprons, warehouses, parks and container ships – that lend his paintings their stark and evocative geometry. It is the particular light and atmospheric conditions of Sydney Harbour that lend alternately to the dark and hazy skies that give his paintings a disquieting sense or the flat and harsh sunshine that reduces buildings and landscapes to their edges.

“I have lived near the inner-city harbour for many years and regularly walk around the foreshore, passing industrial areas, the fish markets, parks and residential areas. It was nearly 20 years before I began to appreciate the geometry of the built environment and that I could paint with straight lines. I use known vistas of harbours, oceans, skies, parks, docks, built structures and natural objects in an abstract way. I might draw an initial rough sketch, but for the most part, my paintings evolve on the canvas.” 

Through his art, Owen strives to create a mood of harmony with some tension between nature and the constructed. He aims to create a sense of being in the moment, not just a representation of what is there. Owen’s approach to painting his Blue Tide scenes is to create minimal landscapes, reduce, eliminate, define and hone compositions to essentials, to abstract and to create broad fields of colour.

“The appeal of any image is its story of light. That is, how light interacts with the subject to inform our sense of time and place. Whether I’m depicting harsh sunlight or the fading light of dusk, it’s this story of light – and the sentiment it evokes I’m most interested in.”  – Holly Dormor

In Holly Dormor’s work, art becomes a medium for exploring the delicate relationship between light and subject. Focusing on still lifes of flowers in vases, each bloom and vessel tells a story illuminated by the ever-changing qualities of light. Whether it’s the intense, harsh sunlight of midday or the soft, fading glow of dusk, the artist is drawn to the emotional resonance that light evokes. Each piece serves as an invitation to pause and reflect on the moment, considering the passage of time and the transient beauty of nature.

Through these paintings, Holly Dormor aims to create a dialogue between the viewer and the artwork, inviting an experience of serenity and complexity in everyday scenes. In these still lifes, flowers transform into a canvas for the exploration of light’s narrative—a reminder of the beauty that exists in the world around us.

Conor approaches traditional genres of painting in a contemporary manner as an autodidactic artist. His work is constructed from considered intentional brushstrokes and a desire to capture the essence of his subject, without a compulsion for fideltiy. Conor has been a finalist in the Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award (2021 and 2023), Clayton Utz Art Award (2021), National Emerging Art Prize (2021), Tony White Memorial Art Prize (2022), Lethbridge Landscape Prize (2023), Brisbane Portrait Prize (2023) and was awarded second place in the figurative category of the Doyles Art Award 2023, as well as being a finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize (2024) and the Lethbridge 20000 Small scale Art Award (2024).

‘Art is a beast and it must be fed, I made it these paintings so it wouldn’t eat me instead!’ Feed the beast is a small selection of recent still life paintings by Conor Knight. The works are characterised by the textures, forms and nature of what sustains us rendered with meaty but deliberate strokes of oil paint.