Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Michael Reid Northern Beaches Michael Reid Northern Beaches presents a dynamic program of group and solo exhibitions.

ON VIEW: LANA DAUBERMANN | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern BeachesA sweeping, sun-dren...
27/08/2026

ON VIEW: LANA DAUBERMANN | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

A sweeping, sun-drenched vision of the Australian coast by Naarm/Melbourne-based painter LANA DAUBERMANN is among the works lighting up ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – our expansive survey of contemporary landscape practice, continuing this weekend and until 5 September at Michael Reid Northern Beaches.

Titled ‘To the Beach’, Daubermann’s large-scale painting immerses the viewer in a serene expanse of azure blue, its expressive surface distilling the dappled light, energetic movement and elemental pull of the coast. “I’ve been working on some bigger works lately,” says the artist, “thinking a lot about the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and how they might translate the Australian landscape.”

Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, raised in Perth and now based near Melbourne’s Merri Creek, Daubermann has painted since childhood, gradually sidestepping a career in advertising to become a full-time artist. Her process often begins en plein air, where shifting light, moving air and the energy of a landscape are absorbed and carried into paintings that privilege the sensation of being somewhere over its literal transcription.

Working across varied and, where possible, repurposed surfaces, Daubermann embraces the materiality of paint and its interaction with each substrate. She describes her landscapes as quiet offerings of gratitude to the natural world – momentary antidotes to the digital fatigue of contemporary life and invitations to slow down, look closely and reconnect with the physical world around us.

It is an approach that finds a natural home in ‘Land, Light, Memory’, which brings together 11 artists whose work considers landscape not only as subject matter but as a creative conduit for memory, mood and meaning. Moving between the bush, the beach and beyond, the exhibition continues across all three of our Newport gallery spaces this weekend and until 5 September.

For enquiries, please email [email protected]



ON VIEW: HANNAH VAN DER WAL | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches“After 15 years l...
26/08/2026

ON VIEW: HANNAH VAN DER WAL | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

“After 15 years living in the Top End, my family and I moved south,” says artist HANNAH VAN DER WAL of the seeds for her new series of paintings – now on view at Michael Reid Northern Beaches as part of our expansive landscape survey, ‘Land, Light, Memory’.

Returning to Darwin just six months after leaving, van der Wal found herself drawn back to a familiar stretch of foreshore, this time encountering it as a visitor rather than a resident. A recent fire had swept through the area, leaving blackened tree trunks silhouetted against the turquoise sea. “As I developed these paintings I began to reflect on the cyclical nature of things,” she says. “The cyclical nature of life, my creative practice and the landscape.”

Now based on Ramindjeri land in South Australia, van der Wal spent formative years in the Northern Territory, including seven in the remote community of Yirrkala, where living next door to Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre profoundly influenced her development as an artist. “The Yolŋu artists there taught me how to bring a certain presence to my practice,” she says. “How to see things differently and how to loosen up with my mark making.”

Having exhibited extensively across Australia and been named a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize, van der Wal has developed a practice steeped in lived experience and the shifting contours of memory. Trees and termite mounds recur as ghostly remnants, their transience speaking to a larger preoccupation with impermanence. “I paint a landscape as it exists in my mind today,” she says. “Tomorrow either the landscape will have changed or my memory of it.”

This slippage between place, memory and transformation sits at the heart of ‘Land, Light, Memory’. Returning to a site she once inhabited, the artist finds renewal in its cycles of destruction and rebirth – capturing a place continually remade by the elements, memory and the passage of time.

For enquiries, please email [email protected]

Hannah van der Wal

ON VIEW: CAMEILIA GRACE EDWARDS | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern BeachesInverell-base...
24/08/2026

ON VIEW: CAMEILIA GRACE EDWARDS | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Inverell-based painter and two-time National Emerging Art Prize finalist CAMEILIA GRACE EDWARDS is currently presenting her latest work at Michael Reid Northern Beaches as one of 11 artists brought together for our large-scale landscape survey, ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – continuing at the gallery and online until 5 September.

Making her Northern Beaches debut with her luminous, large-scale work ‘The Things We Almost Miss’ – which found its new home with a collector several weeks before the show’s official opening – the artist is exhibiting for the first time since the announcement of her representation by Michael Reid Southern Highlands, where she has previously presented two entirely sold-out solo exhibitions.

Edwards will next appear as one of 12 ascendant talents in Michael Reid Murrurundi’s expansive, evolving presentation ‘The Pillars’, which commences an extended, six-week run this Friday, 28 August. Works from this upcoming show can now be previewed and acquired by request.

The artist’s stellar succession of presentations across our Berrima, Newport and now Murrurundi galleries makes her a prime embodiment of the curatorial premise for ‘The Pillars’ – to connect the strands of our individually curated programs and celebrate the artists making waves across the distinct art sites that make up Michael Reid.

Working from images lensed at golden hour before translating them into paint, Edwards brings delicate, halcyon glimpses of the natural world to life with meticulous, almost photorealist precision. Untamed grasses, wildflowers and other overlooked flora are momentarily set aglow and captured in magnificent bursts of luminosity and grace.

“I just love finding beauty in native flora that would often be easily bypassed,” says Edwards in a profile paired with the news of her representation. “When the sun is setting and it lands on these little natural beauties, they come to life and transform.”

For more, please email [email protected]

Artist - Cameilia Grace

ON VIEW: ROBERT SMITH | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern BeachesSetting sprawling Austr...
24/08/2026

ON VIEW: ROBERT SMITH | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Setting sprawling Australian landscapes softly aglow, two photographic lightbox works by ROBERT SMITH are on view this week at Michael Reid Northern Beaches in ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – our expansive group survey bringing together 11 contemporary artists whose sustained encounters with the natural world explore landscape as a conduit for memory, mood and meaning.

Working across photography, sound and sculpture, Smith is interested in the camera as a tool of communication and the ways photographs can shape our understanding of people and place. His two works in ‘Land, Light, Memory’ emerge from his broader project, The Poetry of Placemaking, which examines the history of landscape photography in Australia and the role such images have played in shaping ideas of place and belonging.

“The Poetry of Placemaking examines the place and history of landscape photography in Australia and its impact on settler colonialism,” says Smith. “The work identifies landscape imagery as highly dependent upon context, employing this malleability to question the continued impact of photography in continuing to bind people to place.”

Drawing on research into 19th-century magic lantern shows and the use of photography as a tool of colonisation, Smith’s luminous works bring these histories into the present, inviting us to look anew at the images through which Australian landscapes have been seen and understood.

All works from ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – including The Poetry of Placemaking #2 and #7 – can be viewed and acquired online or by contacting [email protected]

robert smith

michaelreidnorthernbeaches

ON VIEW: ZOË FITZHERBERT | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern BeachesSprawling across two...
20/08/2026

ON VIEW: ZOË FITZHERBERT | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Sprawling across two expansive panels and revealing ever-deepening layers of detail with sustained attention, ‘Pipeclay Shallows’ by celebrated Tasmanian painter ZOË FITZHERBERT is a major centrepiece of ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – our expansive group survey bringing together 11 luminaries of the landscape genre at Michael Reid Northern Beaches.

Fitzherbert’s paintings unfold slowly. At first, ‘Pipeclay Shallows’ presents as an atmospheric sweep of landscape, its softened horizons and shifting passages of colour conjuring a place suspended somewhere between immediate encounter and recollection. Look closer, however, and an intricate architecture emerges: dense fields of fine linear notation ripple across the painted surface, echoing the cartographic systems, contour lines and survey markings that have become a defining feature of the artist’s visual language.

Raised among the muted greens and blue-greys of the Southern Highlands and now living in lutruwita/Tasmania, Fitzherbert traces the distinctive markings threaded through her paintings to a deeply personal source. “The way in which I’ve tied all of these things together in my work has come about only recently, with the catalyst being that I found the maps that my great-grandfather had drawn,” she says. “A family member gave me one that was fading and asked me to revitalise it with archival ink. I literally got to trace the work of this man, whose example has informed so many of the choices that I’ve made in my life, as an architect and an artist.”

Fitzherbert makes her Northern Beaches debut in ‘Land, Light, Memory’ following her first exhibition with Michael Reid Southern Highlands and receipt of the 2025 Henry Jones Art Prize.

All works from ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – including ‘Pipeclay Shallows’ – can be viewed and acquired online or by contacting [email protected]

ZOË FITZHERBERT // ARTIST

NOW OPEN: ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern BeachesMichael Reid Northern Beaches is deli...
17/08/2026

NOW OPEN: ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Until 5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – an expansive group survey now unfolding across our three exhibition spaces and bringing together 11 luminaries of the contemporary landscape genre. Moving between the bush, the beach and beyond, ‘Land, Light, Memory’ considers the landscape not only as subject but as a creative conduit for memory, mood and meaning.

Reflecting on relationships to the environment forged through sustained observation, lived experience and repeated immersion, ‘Land, Light, Memory’ spans a diverse sweep of practices and approaches. Anchoring our first space is a sprawling, spectacular work by first-time exhibitor and winner of this year’s $30,000 Tattersall’s Landscape Art Prize HARRISON BOWE, now on view alongside a series of moody and atmospheric paintings by Italian-Australian artist CHANEL DURANTE.

‘Land, Light, Memory’ marks the Northern Beaches debut of several artists who have previously shown to acclaim at our Southern Highlands gallery, including Tasmanian painter ZOË FITZHERBERT – now presenting a richly absorbing diptych – and New South Wales artist ANTHEA STEAD, whose coastal nocturnes are an ode to the Illawarra escarpment. The coast is likewise cast as muse by Naarm/Melbourne painter LANA DAUBERMANN, while Bellingen-based painter MELANIE WAUGH, a star in our stable, returns with a radiant, buoyantly gestural diptych.

Exhibiting for the first time since the announcement of her representation by Michael Reid Southern Highlands, rising art star CAMEILIA GRACE EDWARDS appears alongside fellow NEAP alumni BEN LINEY – a finalist in this year’s John Leslie Art Prize – and ANA ANDERSON, whose vibrant paintings capture our city’s entanglement of natural and built environments.

Rounding out our assembly are HANNAH VAN DER WAL, offering a painterly tribute to her former home in the Top End, and photomedia artist ROBERT SMITH, whose beautifully constructed lightbox work sets a sublime landscape softly aglow.

For enquiries, please email [email protected]

YOU’RE INVITED: ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Opening Celebration this Saturday, 15 August, 2–4pm | Michael Reid Northern Beac...
12/08/2026

YOU’RE INVITED: ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | Opening Celebration this Saturday, 15 August, 2–4pm | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Please join us this Saturday, 15 August, to toast the opening of ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – a group exhibition assembling 11 luminaries of contemporary landscape painting from across Australia. Drinks will be served from 2pm and many of the artists will be present at our Newport gallery as we welcome their new bodies of work with a public celebration.

This expansive presentation explores artists’ relationships to place formed through sustained observation, lived experience and repeated immersion 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 richly varied approaches to painting that range from the loosely impressionistic to the abstract and emotionally resonant.

OPENING CELEBRATION
‘Land, Light, Memory’
Saturday, 15 August, 2–4pm
Michael Reid Northern Beaches
Shop 2/358 Barrenjoey Road
Newport NSW 2106
RSVP: [email protected]

Now available to explore online ahead of the opening weekend, ‘Land, Light,Memory’ features new work by Ana Anderson, Harrison Bowe, Lana Daubermann, Chanel Durante, Zoë Fitzherbert, Cameilia Grace Edwards, Ben Liney, Robert Smith, Anthea Stead, Hannah van der Wal and Melanie Waugh.

For enquiries, please email [email protected]

Ana Anderson
harrison bowe
Lana Daubermann
Chanel Durante
ZOË FITZHERBERT // ARTIST
Artist - Cameilia Grace
Ben Liney
robert smith
Anthea Stead
Hannah van der Wal
Melanie Waugh

THIS WEEK: ANTHEA STEAD | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | 13 August–5 September | Michael Reid Northern BeachesMichael Reid Nort...
11/08/2026

THIS WEEK: ANTHEA STEAD | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | 13 August–5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to announce Wombarra-based artist ANTHEA STEAD as one of 11 leading interpreters of the Australian landscape featured in our group exhibition ‘Land, Light, Memory’ – opening this week at our Newport gallery and now available to preview online.

Following two acclaimed group presentations at Michael Reid Southern Highlands, where both bodies of work were acquired in their entirety, Stead makes her Michael Reid Northern Beaches debut with a glittering new suite of coastal nocturnes. Living in a small town beneath the Illawarra Escarpment, the artist paints from within her immediate surroundings – a landscape defined by steep cliffs overlooking an endless oceanic expanse, with dense bushland rising behind.

“These works are based on drawings, memories and photos of things I find truly beautiful in my local area,” says Stead, who paints the coast as something felt rather than seen – brooding, luminous and occasionally unsettled. “I combine pieces of photos and sketches together to create something new, yet relatable to the landscape that I live in.”

Throughout Stead’s paintings, human presence remains slight yet quietly poignant. House lights flicker into view beneath the escarpment, the edge of a garden or a cluster of dwellings emerging from the darkness, each dwarfed by the immense presence of sky, sea and stone.

“The Illawarra Escarpment is physically very close to me and also in my heart,” says Stead. “I am particularly drawn to the light at dusk, when the tiny houses turn on their lights and appear to me as jewels dotted in the escarpment forest.”

For enquiries, please visit our website or email [email protected]

Anthea Stead

THIS WEEK: HARRISON BOWE | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | 13 August–5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches“The day’s first...
11/08/2026

THIS WEEK: HARRISON BOWE | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | 13 August–5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

“The day’s first rays of light spear through a fluvial quartzite cathedral onto the tannin-soaked waters below,” says Nipaluna/Hobart-based artist HARRISON BOWE, recalling the encounter with Tasmania’s sublime wilderness that inspired his monumental oil and beeswax painting ‘As the River Sleeps’ – now set to anchor our survey exhibition ‘Land, Light, Memory’ when it opens this week at Michael Reid Northern Beaches.

Bowe makes his Michael Reid debut after receiving this year’s Tattersall’s Landscape Art Prize, taking home the program’s $30,000 prize and joining an illustrious line-up of past winners that includes Margaret Olley and Euan Macleod. “Radiating youthful optimism and confidence, Harrison’s work stands out for its stunning use of light and commanding sense of atmosphere,” noted the judges. “The sweeping movement of the clouds and dynamic perspective create a powerful feeling of momentum and possibility.”

That same sense of awe courses through ‘As the River Sleeps’, paying tribute to “a grand spectacle of earth and water dancing their eternal waltz,” says Bowe. “There I am floating in solitude, humbly dumbfounded by my own insignificance, in a chamber carved by water over time, into rocks as old as life itself.”

A testament to Bowe’s skill and deep reverence for the Tasmanian wilderness, the sprawling ‘As the River Sleeps’ is grounded in his authentic, sustained engagement with the natural environment. “‘As the River Sleeps’ is a painterly delineation of a unity between the landscape’s physical form and my perception of place,” says Bowe, who often ventures into the bush for weeks at a time.

“Navigating its waters, embracing the environment’s various conditions and learning its history, both geological and anthropic. Expressive and composed marks capture the rugged yet poetic nature of the landscape. An interplay of mediums separates solid, liquid and atmospheric forms, giving each its own resonance.”

For enquiries, please email [email protected]

harrison bowe

THIS WEEK: CHANEL DURANTE | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | 13 August–5 September | Michael Reid Northern BeachesItalian-Austral...
10/08/2026

THIS WEEK: CHANEL DURANTE | ‘Land, Light, Memory’ | 13 August–5 September | Michael Reid Northern Beaches

Italian-Australian artist CHANEL DURANTE returns to Michael Reid Northern Beaches this week as one of 11 luminaries of contemporary painting featured in ‘Land, Light, Memory’, a group exhibition that takes an expansive view of the landscape genre, considering place not only as subject but as a conduit for emotional currents. Works from Durante’s new series can now be previewed and acquired online or by request in the lead-up to this week’s opening.

“Landscape, in my work, is not a specific place but an interior condition,” says Durante, whose suite of five moody and atmospheric abstractions for ‘Land, Light, Memory’ follows her first solo exhibition with Michael Reid, ‘A Still Passage’, which was presented at the beginning of this year to great acclaim, with almost all works quickly finding homes with collectors.

“Light, shadow and colour function as emotional registers rather than descriptive elements. I see each canvas as a threshold, a suspended space where stillness and change coexist. The work does not aim to represent, but to evoke presence.”

Working between Australia and Italy, Durante describes her process as one of listening – being attentive to subtle transformations as her brooding and ethereal compositions cohere through cloud-like wafts of colour. Durante’s work has graced the pages of leading interiors and lifestyle publications, including Home Beautiful and Australian House & Garden, and recently saw her named by The Design Files as an artist to watch.

“Each work begins from an inner sensation rather than a fixed image,” says Durante. “I am interested in states of transition, moments when certainty dissolves and something new begins to take form.”

To request a preview and discuss works from the show ahead of the opening, please email [email protected]

Chanel Durante

Address

2/358 Barrenjoey Road, Newport
Sydney, NSW
2106

Telephone

+61283533505

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