Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin Announces Representation of Tim Maguire

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin has announced the representation of Tim Maguire, with the artist set to present his first solo exhibition with the gallery in the first half of 2026. The Sydney-based artist, who works between Australia and rural France, brings to the program a practice shaped by four decades of experimentation across painting, printmaking and digital image-making.

Maguire is known for large-scale works that shift between abstraction and illusion. Built through layered colour-separation processes, his paintings often appear as fields of colour and gesture at close range before resolving into recognisable imagery from a distance. “The ideal painting for me is one where, up close, you see nothing but paint and process and layers, and then, from far enough away, the whole thing resolves into a convincing illusion,” Maguire says. “Ideally, the viewer is like a rubber band — moving back and forth between those two states.”

Michael Reid described a long engagement with the artist’s work, recalling early acquisitions made on behalf of private clients. “Thirty years ago, I acquired my first Maguire painting on behalf of private clients, and I have continued to purchase his paintings and lightboxes every decade since,” he says. Reid points to Maguire’s early use of digitally manipulated photographs translated into oil painting through colour-separation layers, followed by interventions on the wet surface. “His process bridged digital and analogue in ways that were ahead of their time. Step close and his paintings read as abstractions; step back and flowers, snowflakes, or water resolve into luminous focus.”

For Maguire, painting remains a negotiation between image and material. “There’s a play between the illusion of the image and the physicality of the paint,” he says. This tension runs across a body of work that draws on art-historical references while remaining grounded in studio process. His long engagement with printmaking continues to inform the work, particularly the role of chance in image formation.

Floral imagery has been a recurring motif. Maguire describes the subject less as a symbol than as a structure for looking. “Flowers were annoying, because everyone assumes flowers are beautiful. I wasn’t interested in prettiness,” he says. “What interested me was the tradition — the philosophy behind Dutch still lifes, mortality, fleetingness.” Close observation, he notes, reveals forms that verge on abstraction. “Yes, they were flowers, but that wasn’t really the point.”

Maguire first came to national attention when he was awarded the Moët & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship in 1993. His work is held in major public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Reid described the representation as a continuation of a long-standing commitment to the artist’s practice. “I am proud that my colleagues and I represent Tim, one of this country’s most significant artists,” he says.

The forthcoming exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney will present a new body of work drawn from Maguire’s current studio production. Further details will be announced in 2026.