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.