Amy Dynan: Artist Statement & Bio

"I use the framework of beauty to explore the relationship between humanity and nature. My large-scale pastel paintings merge photorealism with abstract sensibilities to document moments of sublimity, transition and fragility in nature. The dynamics of light and dark work as a metaphor for the opposing forces in nature and in ourselves, creating landscapes that hover between land and sky, material and ethereal.

For me, drawing is a lens through which the spectrum of our existence is revealed, and a means to marvel at how lucky we are to feel it fully. To this end my work documents nature in flux and celebrates the beauty of what we stand to lose.”  

Sydney Contemporary '25 - 'Flight of the Sirens'

Amy Dynan brings her unique vision to Sydney Contemporary with Flight of the Sirens, a new body of work presented by Stanley Street Gallery. This evocative series reimagines the mythological siren as a meditation on transformation, freedom, and the untamed human spirit.

In Flight of the Sirens, viewers are invited to see through the eyes of the siren in flight. Large-scale pastel paintings— dramatic in scope and saturated in colour—unfold as emotional cartographies, mapping thresholds between inner and outer worlds, the seen and unseen. Shaped by longing, liberation, and the quiet reclamation of emotional space, these works hold both stillness and wildness at once.

Rooted in ancient Greek mythology, sirens were once seen not as mermaids, but as enigmatic, half-bird, half-woman figures whose songs spoke of deep knowledge and transcendence. Over centuries, the siren was recast as a symbol of danger and seduction. Here, she is reclaimed as an archetype of the feminine psyche in transition—a rising into sovereignty.

Dynan’s visual language resists the urge to resolve light against shadow. Instead, her works allow beauty and longing, light and shadow, to coexist—mirroring life’s own tensions. Her mastery of pastel reaches new heights in this series: pigments are layered, luminous, and immersive, evoking vast aerial seascapes that are at once expansive and deeply intimate.

At its heart, Flight of the Sirens is a celebration of perspective. It invites us to look not with fear, but with wonder and courage. In reclaiming the siren’s gaze, Dynan offers a potent symbol of liberation, transcendence, and connection to the wild, ever-changing forces within and around us.

Amy holds a Master of Contemporary Art and Master of Fine Arts from The University of Sydney. Amy has been
a finalist in numerous prizes including the Dobell Drawing Prize, Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, JADA Art Prize and John Leslie Landscape Prize, and has been selected for residencies in France, Norway, Hill End, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Tweed Regional Gallery and Bundanon Trust (William Fletcher Scholarship).

Represented by Stanley Street Gallery since 2014, Dynan has presented four solo exhibitions; Flight of the Sirens (2025), Sublime (2023), Skytalk (2021) and Water (2019).

Amy Dynan is an award-winning artist, renowned for her nuanced balance between conceptual rigour and classical skills.

Amy's paintings are rich in sublime imagery and draw on various periods throughout art history including Impressionism, Surrealism, and Abstraction. For Amy, the question in art is not what is sublime but how do we access it? Her work explores how we encounter sublime moments and the reverence that emerges through relationship with nature. Permeating her work is a love for the Australian landscape—the clarity of light, the boundlessness of sky, and the classic burnt colours of country.

Amy holds a Master of Contemporary Art and Master of Fine Arts from The University of Sydney. Amy has been a finalist in numerous prizes including the Dobell Drawing Prize, Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, JADA Art Prize and John Leslie Landscape Prize, and has been selected for residencies in France, Norway, Hill End, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Tweed Regional Gallery and Bundanon Trust (William Fletcher Scholarship).

Amy has held four solo exhibitions at Stanley Street Gallery, 'Flight of the Sirens' (2025), 'Sublime' (2023), Skytalk’ (2021) and ‘Water’ (2019).

Artist Portrait by Milly Mead

Amy Dynan: CV August, 2025 Download

Margaret Ackland: Artist Statement & Bio

Domestic Icons – “Objects holding memories of past generations, interwoven with invisible threads of love and loss and the intricate patterns that hold my focus and bring joy.

(The flowers have mostly been grown on our balcony garden).”

Margaret Ackland is a highly respected Australian artist whose practice is renowned for its bold use of colour, intricate layering, and poetic attention to the overlooked details of everyday life.

Working primarily in large-scale watercolours, she creates works that are both technically rigorous and visually arresting, transforming household items, trinkets, and fragments of domestic life into luminous reflections on presence, memory, and identity. By magnifying these objects to monumental proportions, Ackland invites viewers to reconsider their intimacy and significance, elevating the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Ackland’s career achievements are considerable. A four-time Archibald Prize finalist and winner of the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 1988, she has been selected for the prize eleven times, including receiving the People’s Choice Award in 2021. Ackland has held over thirty solo exhibitions since 1985, and her works are represented in national collections such as Artbank, the Mitchell Library, the Holmes à Court Collection, and Deakin University. Her regional solo exhibition in 2016 The Watercolour News at Gippsland Art Gallery transformed daily newspapers into painterly meditations on media and information. She has also been featured in Italian Vogue, profiled on ABC TV’s Compass, and commissioned in 2018 to produce a significant large-scale work for the Intercontinental Hotel in Bangladesh.

By blurring still life and portraiture, Ackland elevates the domestic into the extraordinary, creating works that are intimate, expansive, and deeply human.

Margaret Ackland: CV September, 2025 Download