David Middlebrook ‘Horizon perspective’

Current Exhibitions

7 Aug

Written By Issy Le B

David Middlebrook

Horizon perspective

14 August – 4 September 2025

Art Atrium 48 is proud to present David Middlebrook’s exhibition, ‘Horizon perspective’, a contemplative body of work that reflects the artist’s enduring obsession with the Australian desert horizon. As an observer untethered to place, Middlebrook approaches the landscape not as someone of the land but as a stranger drawn to its beauty, brutality, and vast stillness. The exhibition features medium to large-scale oil paintings that explore tone and mark with meticulous intensity, drawing inspiration from the arid terrain north of Broken Hill. Accompanying these are a series of Nocturnes in sepia and wash, created en plein air, capturing flooded plains, mountain silhouettes, and the subtle tonal shifts of the evening skies. While landscapes elsewhere offer their own palettes and sensibilities, it is the Australian desert that brings Middlebrook a profound sense of calm and endless possibility. Traversing its vastness, he searches the physical world in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the interior landscape within the mind.

“My art takes me to deserts, for in deserts I can think. The overwhelming subtleties of tone, colour, form, beauty, brutality, the silence is noise, shadows haunted, earth stained, unbearable heat or penetrating cold, but delicious isolation and stillness. I’m a crude contemporary explorer searching the physical landscape to understand the landscape of the mind. Images of isolation and alienation. Other landscapes, in other countries, bring their own palette and sensibility, different, it’s the Australian Deserts that makes me calm with possibilities. I am someone who feels unconnected to any place. This is not my land, I’m a stranger, I observe, never connected by being country, I’m not of this land , I’m only an observer. I paint.” — David Middlebrook

About the Artist

David Middlebrook developed his vision of the Australian landscape exploring the impact of the horizon in different media. He had travelled to various outback areas of Australia including the Aboriginal art community at Utopia and had collaborated with Ada Bird Petyarre, artist, while he was undertaking his research for his PhD degree. David enjoys spending time painting with other artists and is on regular field trips painting with other artists living in the Blue Mountains.

David Middlebrook was born in Gloucester, New South Wales and completed his Bachelor of Arts/Visual Arts degree at University of Newcastle in 1990. He undertook and completed his PhD degree at University of Newcastle in 2006 with his thesis on Exploring the Horizon, a Journey with Voss and Ada. David Middlebrook was a Lecturer in Painting, Drawing and Art History at University of Newcastle from 2007 to 2013. He moved to Medlow Bath in Blue Mountains in 2010.

David Middlebrook had exhibited extensively in numerous solo exhibitions throughout Australia. He was a finalist numerous times in Tattersall’s Bendigo Bank Art Prize, Brisbane, including being a winner of the art prize in 2002. David Middlebrook was a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize in 2013 and he was also selected to exhibit in the Beijing International Art Biennale in 2017. He had exhibited successfully with Art Atrium at Art Central Hong Kong in 2017, 2018 & 2019, Sydney Contemporary in 2015 and 2017. He was also selected for the Ningbo Museum Artist Residency program in Ningbo China in 2018.

David Middlebrook’s work is in the collection of the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, Broken Hill City Art Gallery, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Maitland City Art Gallery, Muswellbrook City Art Gallery, Moree Plains Gallery, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Tattersalls Club, Brisbane, Forster/Tuncurry Regional Council, University of Newcastle, School of Fine Art, News Corporation, Sydney, William Bowmore Collection, Museum of the Senses, Sendai Japan, Trinity Grammar School, Summer Hill, John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle, Newcastle Permanent Building Society, Newcastle Conservatorium of Music, University of Newcastle, Crisp and Associates, Sydney, and Price Waterhouse Coopers, Canberra.