Joanna Reid Gallery

My current contemporary art practice engages the art of noticing other natures hidden in plain sight. It valorises the modest and everyday vegetal and faunal natures inhabiting our backyard – the invisibilised others that we pass on our way to the IGA shop.

Coastal Heath (detail), oil on canvas, 1 x 1.8m

For example, rather than righting-off the scraggly grevillea on the corner as just a backgrounded suburban bit of bush, my practice encourages an attentive double-take. To pause and stay awhile; to try to understand more intimately how the extraordinary choreography of sensual colours and design animates one grevillea flower; how the flowers make each other beautiful together. In a time where Australia has never experienced such faunal and floral extinctions, paying attention to these animacies of other natures has never been more urgent. 

Spring I and II, acrylic on canvas, 2 x 50 x 50cm

Grevillea Sunrise, oil on canvas, 90 x 90cm

These concerns are reflected in a body of works on canvas being developed for exhibition in 2021. The strong design elements that echo through each work draw on my background in graphic design. Through design, I identify and re-configure the essential animating features and relationships at play in each subject; noticing their repetitions and subtle differences. Though I consider myself an emerging artist, I have been involved in the contemporary art sector for close to fifteen years, producing and exhibiting my own work and promoting others. For several years I managed The Freckled Lounge gallery in Byron Bay, which I established with my sister Susan Reid. As well as providing an opportunity to exhibit my own work, the gallery was a strong advocate Queensland contemporary artists and designers.