Sydney: lines of memory

Christian Bonett, Ursula Burgoyne, Somchai Charoen, Vicki Grima, Jan Howlin, Hendrik Kolenberg, Jenny Orchard, Sassy Park, Anna Parsons, Arun Sharma, Toni Warburton, Suh Yongsun

Gallery LNL is pleased to present Sydney: lines of memory, on view from 18 July to 16 August, 2025. This group exhibition brings together artists working across ceramics, drawing, and painting whose practices trace the material and psychological contours of contemporary Sydney. 

What does Sydney evoke in those who move through it- whether by birthright, migration, or in passing? 

For artists such as Vicki Grima and Toni Warburton, the city's architectural silhouettes, harbour lines, and streetscapes are repositories of formative memories, longing, and identity- intimate imprints of lives lived. For others, including Christian Bonett and Arun Sharma, whose experiences of Sydney came as (relatively) recent arrivals, these same contours evoke aspirations and new beginnings- dreams that continue to shape a city founded upon the ideals of immigration. Elsewhere, the works of Suh Youngsun present an incisive outsider's perspective. Created during his residency at a former psychiatric hospital at the University of Sydney, his expressive and psychologically charged paintings refract Sydney's urban textures through the prism of cultural distance, offering fresh insights into the city's inherent tensions and contradictions that are often difficult to perceive from within. Together, these perspectives form a layered and multifaceted portrait of Sydney- one that reflects the perceptions of both its inhabitants and outsiders, while simultaneously shaping the city's evolving identity.