Bruce Reynolds
Artist's Statement
These works have evolved from consideration of migration and the transcontinental passage of ideas via vessels and other objects. They are a reflection on the shockwaves of history that resonate into this century, and an attempt to fuse the intimate with the monumental and the archaeological with recent experience. History is registered as residue rather than illustration.
Casting and relief permit surface to behave as a generative force rather than a final skin. They are intuitive and physical . I imagine beastly to be the state where self concious intellect is overwritten. A tower is inverted. Column for a Portal (2025) is a modular stack conceived after the destruction and restoration of portal structures such as the Mycenaen Gate and those at Palmyra.
Architectural and figurative associations emerge gradually where industrial pattern meets hand carved surfaces. They are characterised by the slippage between two and three dimensions, bypassing the digital and holding the viewer at the threshold of recognition.
Biography
BRUCE REYNOLDS is a Brisbane based artist who grew up in Canberra, whose migrant background is English and Nigerian. He studied in Melbourne and Canberra and has lectured at several Australian art schools over several decades in painting, photography inter-media and sculpture.
He has made trips to China, Malta, England, Germany and Italy to pursue an interest in the historic migration of ideas and forms linking Europe and Asia. His practice responds to the urban environment using its materiality to evoke a dialogue between recent histories and the archaic. He won the Woollahra Sculpture Prize in 2022 and completed a commissioned 30meter relief at 205 North Quay in February 2025.
Recent exhibitions of include Time Machine at the National library of Australia, Canberra Art Biennial 2022 and ReMake Remodel at Canberra Contemporary in 2024.
How Soon Is Now? Is an exhibition currently touring eastern Australia.
He is represented in the collections of the Queensland Art Gallery, Museum of Brisbane, Artbank, QUT and UQ Art Museums, Canberra Museum and Gallery and regional art galleries
