​18 October  - November 2025, Northern Beaches Gallery Cromer NSW

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The embodied landscape paintings of Mei Zhao trace former sites of Chinese market gardens across the Northern Beaches. From the 1890s to the 1960s, Chinese market gardeners played an important role in the production of vegetables as Manly Vale, Brookvale, and Curl Curl transitioned from farmland to suburbia. With so many of the sites being demolished and built over, their histories seemingly disappeared from the landscape. Part of Mei Zhao’s painting practice is archival, uncovering government papers, old maps, and oral history to form the underpainting of her landscapes. The other part is plein air painting, where her mark-making evokes the deep gouges of irrigation channels and the patterned garden beds seen in archival aerial photography. Caked mixtures of acrylic pigment and concrete powder recall a pastel spectrum of colours found onsite, while hessian strings the canvas together.

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Laboured Landscapes is a solo exhibition curated by Dr Daniel Press

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Photo by Richard Trang