About the artwork

Intimacy, family, spirituality and connection find allegorical form in the photography of Melbourne-based artist Jesse Boyd-Reid. Merging candid documentation with constructed scenarios, Boyd-Reid explores relationships between the self, family and the environment.

The large-scale work The Gift is a reflection on the ways that community and connection enrich our lives. Lines are deliberately blurred to indicate togetherness and the shifting nature of beliefs around culture, spirituality, sexuality, intimacy and connection to place. This is a realm where ordinary objects act as both images of themselves and symbols of the rituals that nourish and sustain us.

The Gift was commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program for PHOTO 2021.

About the artist

Jesse Boyd‐Reid is a Melbourne-based contemporary artist working primarily with photography. Growing up in northern New South Wales, Jesse completed his Undergraduate and Honours degree in Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. In 2018 Jesse was awarded the Lionel Gell Scholarship for Artistic Excellence and was accepted into the Arctic Trust’s residency program in Svalbard, Norway. Recently, Jesse’s work has been included in exhibitions at AIRspace Projects, Sydney, and at Monash Gallery of Art. In February 2020, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, NSW, presented Jesse’s first solo show, Adrift.