Michael Reid Sydney, 109 Shepherd Street, Sydney (2026)

28/05/2026

COMING SOON: DJIRRIRRA WUNUŊMURRA YUKUWA & MOYURRURRA WUNUŊMURRA | ‘Classical’ | 11–28 June | Michael Reid Sydney

Michael Reid Sydney will soon present a major exhibition by Yolŋu artists DJIRRIRRA WUNUŊMURRA YUKUWA and MOYURRURRA WUNUŊMURRA, sisters and leading creative voices at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land. Bringing together two distinct yet deeply connected practices, their joint exhibition can now be previewed by request.

It is almost 20 years since Djirrirra won the Northern Territory Contemporary Art Award and nearly 30 years since the monumental bark painting she worked on alongside her father, Yaŋgarriny Wunuŋmurra, won First Prize at the 1997 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. And it is exactly 80 years since that same father was photographed at a larrakitj ceremony at Yirrkala, interring the bones of a deceased clan member within a richly painted memorial pole destined to return to the earth.

This is a vivid example of the bifocal nature of Yolŋu art and culture, where designs can embody contemporary practice and ancient spiritual observance at once. ‘Classical’ binds these threads together: two sisters, daughters of the same father, trace distinct artistic trajectories in the realm between classical and contemporary expression.

Djirrirra has exhibited extensively across Australia and internationally. ‘Classical’, however, is the first show in her own right for her sister. While Djirrirra is lauded for extending the visual language of Yolŋu art into new terrain, Moyurrurra has remained at her homeland at Gängan, working within the formal Dhaḻwaŋu iconography passed down by their father.

It might be easy to frame one practice as innovative and the other as traditional. Yet Moyurrurra’s art resists such a distinction. Hers are works of remarkable delicacy and authority – classical art rendered at an exceptionally high level. What unites their work is extraordinary discipline and finesse – the kind of devotion demanded by sacred cultural knowledge.

For previews, please email [email protected]

28/05/2026

A key work from TAMARA DEAN’s 2023 series ‘The Suspended Moment’ is featured in this month’s Belle magazine, with the artist’s floating worlds forming an atmospheric anchor within interior designer Jillian Dinkel’s sumptuous scheme for an Eora/Sydney barrister’s chambers.

Here, the ethereal mood and gravity-defying motifs of Dean’s photograph are given further lift-off by a custom bronze chain-link hanging system – a tactile, industrial detail that adds another sculptural layer to the work’s display and to its elegant, caramel-clad setting within Harry Seidler’s iconic MLC Centre.

“The space feels layered and intentional, with every element contributing to the atmosphere,” says Dinkel in the Belle story – now published online and in the magazine’s June/July issue. “A favourite feature is the suspended chain art installation. We collaborated with two framers and a metalworker to achieve the final result. It introduces a more decorative element that still feels quite masculine and solid. In a small footprint, that vertical gesture adds drama.”

Throughout ‘The Suspended Moment’ – lensed within a purpose-built underwater studio at Dean’s property in New South Wales – the artist channels the sumptuous mood of a Dutch vanitas painting, only to upend tradition as her still-life objects take flight, appearing to defy gravity as watery currents unsettle each photographic tableau.

Thank you to and for featuring Tamara Dean’s work. Photographs from ‘The Suspended Moment’ and other bodies of work by the artist are available to explore and acquire online and by request. Please email [email protected]

Photographs by Dave Wheeler |

26/05/2026

“Attending the opening celebration for ‘Light Years’ at Michael Reid Sydney felt less like arriving at an exhibition than slipping, almost imperceptibly, into a different grammar of seeing,” writes Time ∴ Tide Editor-in-Chief Alex Woods in a recent story on TIM MAGUIRE’s current solo show – on view this week and available to explore online.

“The gallery’s Eora/Sydney flagship was already alive with the slow friction of attention – conversations rising and dissolving, bodies adjusting to scale, and the faint vertigo that occurs when images refuse to settle into their expected clarity.”

Taking a panoptic view of Maguire’s visual universe through an expansive constellation of paintings, ‘Light Years’ pulls into focus the deceptively disparate subjects that have loomed large across his practice, revealing light itself as the central, animating force in his decades-long wrangling with the image-making process.

“The exhibition marks a pivotal moment in the practice of Maguire, whose work has long occupied a peculiar position within contemporary painting: too materially committed to be purely digital, too structurally unstable to be purely representational,” writes Woods. “‘Light Years’ gathers new and historical works not as a chronological survey, but as a kind of recursive field – where earlier propositions return not as origins, but as variations that were always already latent.”

Maguire is globally celebrated for his cinematic, large-scale paintings that pull the viewer into a heightened field of looking. “At first glance, the paintings appear seductively legible,” writes Woods. “But recognition is always provisional. The closer one moves, the more the image begins to decompose into its constituent logic: layered separations of cyan, magenta, yellow and black; solvent disruptions that fracture continuity; fields of pigment that behave less like depiction than like interference patterns.”

Read the entire story via the link in our bio. Thank you to for covering ‘Light Years’ – on view until 6 June. For enquiries, please visit our website or email [email protected]

23/05/2026

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin is delighted to announce our representation of STEPHANIE TABRAM, one of Tasmania’s most accomplished and widely collected contemporary painters.

Across a practice spanning more than three decades, Tabram has developed a singular approach to landscape painting that reconciles the traditions of realism with a deeply felt, experiential understanding of place. Working from her studio in New Norfolk, on the Derwent River, the British-born artist draws on the pastoral terrain of southern Tasmania — landscapes shaped by long familiarity and lived experience.

“Motoring around Tasmania, you see Stephanie Tabram there and there again. Stephanie is in the landscape,” says our Chairman and Director, Michael Reid OAM. “She captures an aspect of her world so masterfully that the landscape becomes a Tabram — a terrain that speaks specifically to a place, yet becomes all ours. A major contemporary painter, she is an artist my colleagues and I at the Sydney gallery are honoured to represent on the mainland and internationally.”

At once expansive and intricately detailed, Tabram’s compositions unfold as complex visual fields in which light, atmosphere and texture are held in dynamic equilibrium. Sunlit grasses, silvery waterways and the brooding drama of Tasmanian skies are brought into luminous focus through a meticulous process of layering in acrylic, built gradually into images that are less static views than sustained acts of looking.

“Before beginning work each day, I spend an hour or two walking along the riverbank,” says the artist. “It has become a daily meditation: observing the minutiae, the subtle changes, the passing seasons and the life and flow of the river itself.”

Tabram has held more than 20 solo exhibitions and has been recognised in numerous prizes, including the Glover Prize (People’s Choice Award, 2009) and the Hadley’s Art Prize (People’s Choice Award, 2024). Her work is held in significant collections nationally, including Parliament House and Artbank.

For enquiries, please email [email protected]

Portraits by Rosie Hastie |

22/05/2026

COMING SOON: FIONA POMPEY | 11–28 June | Michael Reid Sydney

Announced this week as a finalist in the General Painting Award at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara artist FIONA POMPEY will present her first solo exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney next month, with works now available to preview and acquire by request.

Born in Alice Springs and a longtime resident of Kaltjiti/Fregon in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia, Pompey began painting at Kaltjiti in the early 2000s alongside her mother, Tali Tali Pompey, an artist also celebrated for her powerful desert paintings.

“My paintings look down on the land from above, a bit like looking at a map,” says Pompey, who was awarded the Emerging Indigenous Art Award in last year’s Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize. “This is ngura puḻka tali – big sandhill Country.”

Pompey’s forthcoming exhibition coincides with her inclusion in the landmark exhibition ‘Ngura Puḻka – Epic Country’ at the National Gallery of Australia. “Fiona’s artwork captures the vibrancy and colour of the desert landscape,” note the curators in the exhibition’s accompanying publication, which dedicates a chapter to Pompey’s practice.

“The ridges of sandhills typical of the desert country around Fregon refer to her mother’s work of tali (sandhills). The small, rounded shapes reflect the habitat of shrubs, trees and bushes. These grow on the sides and at the base of the sandhill where the water collects after the rain. They provide a valuable source of many food-bearing grasses and shrubs.”

Michael Reid Sydney looks forward to presenting Pompey’s large-scale, richly absorbing, colour-drenched paintings when her show opens next month. We invite collectors to contact the gallery to receive a preview catalogue, discuss acquisitions or book a private in-person viewing in advance of the opening.

Please email [email protected]

21/05/2026

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin is delighted to announce that ‘Mat Weaving’, 2008, by Ngan’gikurrungurr artist REGINA PILAWUK WILSON has been acquired for the Rotational Art Collection within the Australian Parliament House Art Collections and is now on view at Parliament House on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country in Canberra.

Comprising works of contemporary Australian art and craft that reflect aspects of Australian culture, character and identity, the Rotational Art Collection is displayed in general circulation areas at Parliament House, parliamentarians’ suites and public exhibitions.

We wish to congratulate Wilson on her work’s accession to this nationally significant collection – news that affirms her well-established position as a major force in Australian contemporary culture and an essential figure in the story of First Nations art.

Beyond Parliament House, Wilson’s work is held in collections across Australia and internationally, including the British Museum, LACMA and almost every state gallery Australia-wide. Most recently a finalist in the Sulman Prize, she has received numerous accolades since her defining win at the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Last year, she exhibited in Washington, D.C., where she was received by then-Ambassador to the United States, Dr Kevin Rudd AC.

Born in 1948 at Wudikapildyerr in the Daly River region, NT, Wilson is known for her intricately woven syaw (fish trap) and pupunyi (woven mat), and paintings that draw on these fibre art traditions. Ngan’gikurrungurr people pass stitches across generations. Through her practice, Wilson revives her ancestors’ stitches, preserving this knowledge by painting a record – as in ‘Mat Weaving’.

“I like to keep the traditional story in there, but I change it a little, to keep it beautiful with different colour and pattern,” says Wilson, now looking ahead to her next solo show at Michael Reid Sydney – opening in early July. Works from this series will be available to preview and acquire exclusively by request. Please email [email protected]

20/05/2026

Congratulations to PETRINA HICKS, whose seminal 2005 photograph ‘Shenae & Jade’ achieved an exceptional result of $55,000 through Deutscher and Hackett at last night’s Australian and International Fine Art auction.

In significantly surpassing estimates, this result builds on a remarkable trajectory of recent sales of historical editions of Hicks’s work, demonstrating impressive consistency on the secondary market and further affirming her position as one of the most important figures in Australian contemporary photography.

In 2021, another edition of ‘Shenae & Jade’ sold through Deutscher and Hackett for $46,636. In May 2024, the work established a new artist auction record at $68,750. Soon after, an edition of Hicks’s 2013 Bowness Prize-winning work ‘Venus’ – which, alongside ‘Shenae & Jade’, was a towering presence in her 2019 National Gallery of Victoria retrospective – achieved a secondary market result exceeding $40,000.

Together, these sales point to sustained collector demand for Hicks’s work at a moment of growing maturity and confidence in the Australian photography market. “We’re seeing an evolution,” noted Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin director Toby Meagher, speaking on ABC Radio after the 2024 ‘Shenae & Jade’ sale about the momentum surrounding Hicks’s work.

“A work that sold for around $3000 just under 20 years ago is now selling for more than $68,000. Over those 20 years, there’s been a small, incremental rise in [Hicks’s] primary prices as the gallery has built her audience. But now, some of those editions – key works that have become markers of her career – will turn up at auction and find real strength.”

Over more than two decades, Hicks has honed a singular photographic language that subverts the coolly seductive codes of advertising while drawing on classical myth, folklore and art history to reframe the contemporary female experience. Earlier this year, she presented her latest work, ‘Fate Spinner’, as part of Michael Reid’s Aotearoa Art Fair presentation.

To discuss works by Petrina Hicks, please email [email protected]
hicks

15/05/2026

NOW OPEN: TIM MAGUIRE | ‘Light Years’ | Until 6 June | Michael Reid Sydney

Michael Reid Sydney is delighted to present ‘Light Years’ – the first exhibition by acclaimed Australian artist TIM MAGUIRE since the announcement of his representation by the gallery, and a landmark entry in his globally celebrated, four-decade career.

Unfolding across both floors of the gallery, ‘Light Years’ takes a panoptic view of Maguire’s visual universe through an expansive constellation of paintings that pull into focus the deceptively disparate subjects that have loomed large in his practice to date. Light is revealed as the animating force in his decades-long wrangling with the image-making process – its painterly alchemies and optical tensions between surface and depth, abstraction and illusion.

Maguire’s paintings pull the viewer into a heightened field of looking. Applying colour separation techniques adapted from printmaking to the lush materiality of oil on linen, he constructs images from discrete, translucent, solvent-splashed layers that allow the whiteness of the ground to illuminate the surface from within – a painterly approximation of a luminous screen image.

Here, an effulgence of colour might dissipate up close into pure sensation, optically charged abstraction or flickers of celestial matter, only to resolve at a distance into impossible landscapes or hyper-floral tableaux. Beauty, though often his work’s most immediately arresting quality, is less an end than a means – holding the gaze long enough for the image to unmake and remake itself.

“The notion was to gather the threads that led to recent works and look back at their antecedents,” says Maguire, whose show reveals affinities and echoes across time. While reaching back to his personal iconography, ‘Light Years’ eschews a retrospective’s logic in favour of something fluid, recursive, cumulative and alive: a collapsing of time that hews closer to the plurality of ideas in the studio, where magnificent obsessions and restless experimentation see subjects surface, overlap and reconfigure.

For enquiries, please email [email protected]

14/05/2026

The Governor-General of Australia, Her Excellency the Honourable Ms Sam Mostyn AC, is pictured here at the Art Gallery of New South Wales viewing this year’s Wynne Prize-winning work, ‘The Waṉambi Tree’, by Yolŋu artist GAYPALANI WAṈAMBI.

The Governor-General attended the state gallery’s 2026 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman dinner as a guest of its President, Michael Rose AM, and Director, Maud Page (also pictured).

Repost from

Following the announcement of the finalists and winners of the Archibald Prize, Wynne Prize and Sulman Prize, the evening brought together artists, trustees, board members and generous supporters to celebrate portraiture and Australian storytelling.

The Governor-General toured the exhibitions and met with artists and guests, including James Powditch, who painted the Governor-General’s portrait for this year’s Archibald Prize. The Governor-General also took part in a conversation with Maud Page, reflecting on the importance of representation in art and public life.

The dinner celebrated Wendy Whiteley OAM’s lifelong contribution to the arts and recognised 2026 Archibald Prize winner Richard Lewer for his portrait of Pitjantjatjara Elder Iluwanti Ken, and Packing Room Prize winner Sean Layh for his portrait of Jacob Collins.

🎨 The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes run until 16 August.

Michael Reid Sydney

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