Emily Gordon ‘City Home’

Raised in Oakland California, Emily 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. ‘City Home’ follows her sold out 2021 solo show at Michael Reid Northern Beaches. Emily was also a finalist in the 2021 National Emerging Art Prize, as well as a previous Mosman Art Prize finalist.

‘City Home’ documents a geographically tiny slice of urban Sydney (Gadigal land). The paintings have a temporal grounding, charting the day from dawn over the morning to the long shadows of the afternoon, finally to dusk and nightfall. Each piece captures a specific moment in the changing light, and so the journey of these works is not in location but in time.

“My production of ‘City Home’ traversed the long 2021 NSW lockdown, when our physical boundaries drastically constricted again. As patterns and routines broke down – weeks and months rolling indistinguishably into the next – the cycle of the day became pronounced in its tight repetition and emerged as a central preoccupation in my work arising from this period.”