John Sheehy’s paintings reference Sydney harbour’s enduring undercoat; the industry-based architectural forms of its foreshore and its broader (and literal) base coat.

His works are the meeting point of structural abstraction and delicate figuration, and present a new topoanalysis of the harbour as a site of material and spatial underneaths. Moving against prototypical veneer-based representations of the harbour, Sheehy’s works situate the harbour city within an ethereal, understated and imagined cultural psyche.