iManly Art Gallery & MuseumManly
Michael Muir: The Shape of Colour
Survey of Northern Beaches painter Michael Muir's past decade, tracing his vibrant, memory-laced landscapes through colour, form and composition.
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In Seasons of emotions (2024), a woman in a mint T-shirt stands front and centre with her arms folded, and nobody behind her has a face. Muir lays his oil on with a palette knife, so trees and hedges turn into stacked slabs of colour, and his people are passers-by. The gallery director's foreword puts it simply: we don't know where they have come from or where they are going.
This is a survey of more than a decade of his paintings, hung in three themes: coastal landscapes, urban streets and global travels. Muir was born in Scotland in 1975, spent part of his childhood in Southeast Asia and paints from a studio on the Northern Beaches. You walk past roads that curve out of frame and never say where they lead, and that is the point.
Entry is free, Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, four minutes' walk from Manly Wharf. Muir teaches a colour and composition masterclass on Monday 12 October; RSVP through the gallery.
Look for
Seasons of emotions, 2024
Look for the woman in the mint T-shirt, arms folded, while small faceless figures, a pink shrub in an orange planter and a yellow building with a dark doorway fill the plaza behind her.
Past the stacks, 2014
Two figures stand on a timber deck beside a pale blue pool, with white apartment blocks and tall dark trees behind; it won the 2014 Mosman Art Prize and is lent by Mosman Art Collection.
Made a move, 2021
A curving suburban street where a giant pink tree and a row of red, orange and yellow lumps of shrubbery sit on the median strip under a single flat cloud.
Stand alone, 2026
The newest work and the catalogue cover: a tall tiered pine on a green lawn above turquoise water, with palms and a terracotta-roofed house on the far side.
Counting flowers, 2015
From the travel section: snow banked against yellow and red houses and a dark, spiky tree under a flat blue sky.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Rainy Days
Skip if
You want portraits or stories: Muir's figures are faceless passers-by, not characters.
Also at Manly Art Gallery & Museum
On now nearby
Image credits
3
- Michael Muir: The Shape of ColourCourtesy of Manly Art Gallery & Museum
- Portia Geach Memorial Award 2026Courtesy of S.H. Ervin Gallery
- Jordan Gower: Does the moon know the well?Photograph: Jacquie Manning