Anthea Kemp: Moments that form and cover

From 16 November 2026

Anthea Kemp is a Melbourne-based artist whose painting practice reflects her interest in land conservation. In focusing on the smallest elements of the landscape, like seed pods or a blade of native grass, she demonstrates her deep reverence for nature.

In 2025, Kemp was awarded Shepparton Art Museum’s Theodore Urbach Landscape Prize and Studio Scholarship, which saw her spend three months engaging with the local landscape while undertaking the scholarship period onsite in the SAM Artist Studio. During this time, Kemp developed a new body of work informed by her research and conservation activities at the nearby Euroa Arboretum and the Goulburn Broken Indigenous Seed Bank.

Working from careful observation of the land and native species growing on it, Kemp’s paintings are filled with ribbons and pools of colour, delicate meandering lines, and subtly shifting hues. Balancing representation and abstraction, these works evoke the textures, rhythms, and atmosphere of her observations.

Through these paintings—situated between research, reflection, and response—I hope to highlight the critical role of land conservation and to evoke a deeper awareness of our shared responsibility in caring for and regenerating ecological systems.

 – Anthea Kemp

The Theodore Urbach Landscape Prize and Studio Scholarship is presented annually by SAM, proudly supported by the Theodore Urbach Landscape Painting Scholarship and Prize Charitable Trust, managed by Equity Trustees. Applications are open for the 2027 prize until 1 February 2027 — learn more here.

Featured artwork: Lesley Dumbrell, Azzurum (detail), 1987, acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist

Curator:  Caroline Esbenshade, SAM Curator — Exhibitions & Collections

Location: Level 2 Concourse

Free