Close to Home is Grahame Sydney’s first exhibition in fifteen years. It includes paintings from 1992 through to the most recent.

In this manner, it takes something of a survey stance with a significant proportion of the featured works being loaned from private collectors, and for their outstanding generosity we especially thank them. Another group of paintings have been directly sourced from Grahame and Fiona Sydney’s personal collection alongside new works made with this exhibition fully in mind.¹

Close to Home also clearly shows the artist has numerous primary concerns and a much broader visual vocabulary than generally understood. Featuring a wide range of media – oil, egg tempera, watercolour, and gouache, plus drawings and editioned works – which collectively demonstrate that his technical virtuosity, acclaimed restraint, and pursuit of excellence encompass all of the constituent processes in his studio practise. Drawings and photographs made in situ are fundamental resource tools but it is back in the solitude of his studio where it all really happens. There the artistic decisions – what to include, what to leave out – begin the slow journey of his making processes.

Close to Home attests that ‘landscapes and a sense of place’ are ‘an essential facet of national character and that a spiritual connection to the land is fundamental to one’s sense of belonging.’²