Land, Light, Memory

Michael Reid Northern Beaches will usher in spring with Land, Light, Memory – a group exhibition assembling 11 luminaries of contemporary landscape painting from across Australia. This expansive presentation explores relationships to place formed through artists’ sustained observation, lived experience and repeated immersions in nature. Moving between the bush, the beach and beyond – from the gothic Tasmanian wilds to the Top End – the exhibition considers landscapes not only as subjects but as vessels for memory, mood and meaning, reflected through art-making approaches that range from the loosely impressionistic to the abstract and emotionally resonant.

Land, Light, Memory will mark the Michael Reid Northern Beaches debut of several artists who have previously exhibited to great acclaim at our Southern Highlands gallery, including celebrated Tasmanian painter Zoë Fitzherbert and New South Wales South Coast artist Anthea Stead. Inverell-based rising art star Cameilia Grace Edwards will exhibit her work for the first time since the announcement of her representation by Michael Reid Southern Highlands, where she has presented two entirely sold-out solo exhibitions since her breakout turns in the 2024 and 2025 editions of the National Emerging Art Prize (NEAP).

Edwards will appear alongside fellow NEAP alumni Ana Anderson and Ben Liney, who returns to the ’Beaches after his first solo exhibition earlier this year, as well as Chanel Durante, whose moody, atmospheric abstracted landscapes were a captivating presence in her debut solo exhibition, also staged earlier this year. Joining them are Bellingen-based painter Melanie Waugh – a major star in our stable of represented artists – as well as Tasmanian painter Harrison Bowe, photomedia artist Robert Smith and Northern Territory-based painter Hannah van der Wal.

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