Michaela Gleave is an Australian artist based on Bediagal/Wangal Country, Sydney. Her practice is grounded in long-form, research-driven projects, and encompasses installation, performance, sound, video, photography, sculpture, and digital and online works. Working across art, science, and philosophy, Gleave explores how knowledge is formed at the edges of certainty, and how human, planetary, and technological systems are entangled across time, scale, and lived experience. Her projects frequently engage with material processes, duration, and spatial choreography to make visible forces that are otherwise abstract or operate beyond human perception.
Gleave’s work has been presented extensively in Australia and internationally, including in Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom, Austria, South Africa, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Iceland, the United States, and Mexico. She has developed major performance and installation works for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Gallery of Modern Art, Dark Mofo, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Bristol Biennial, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Carriageworks, and Gertrude Contemporary, among others. She has undertaken residencies at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, Tokyo Wonder Site, NES, TAKT, as well as Australian residencies with CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Sydney Observatory, Powerhouse Museum, Artspace, and Bundanon. In 2015 Gleave won the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize and in 2013 was awarded a Creative Australia Fellowship. Permanent installations of her work have been commissioned by the Bendigo Art Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, and The Rechabite. She is currently a resident artist at the TWT Creative Precinct.
Selected exhibitions and projects include EventHorizon, Artspace (2026), Between Us, Art Gallery of Western Australia (2023); TarraWarra Biennial 2021: Slow Moving Waters, TarraWarra Museum of Art (2021); Messages of Hope, Messages of Love, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2020); Coronal Mass, Salamanca Arts Centre (2019); The Score, Ian Potter Museum of Art (2017); In Other Worlds, Bristol Biennial (2016); Trace: Performance and its Documents, Gallery of Modern Art (2014); A Day is Longer than a Year, Fremantle Arts Centre (2013); and Primavera 09, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2009).