Not Afraid Of Life
Mark Reid’s new series of figurative ceramics recently launched the
610 Artspace on Ann Street in the Valley with fellow local artists
Madeleine Rosser, David Fenoglio and Emma Coulter. It was a well
received exhibition and certainly demonstrated a new evolutionary
sense of animation and flexibility in Reid’s practice.
Too Tough To Die
In his trademark style, Reid’s motley crew of characters
speak to us as they always have, through the trials and
triumphs of the everyday, but this exhibition finds an
emerging undercurrent of fragile positivity.
Reid has created a strikingly ‘human’ body of work,
which carries as many contradictions and peculiarities
as we bring to it as viewers.
There is an evident cross section in these sculptures between
hardy endurance and volatile weakness of the human spirit.
Like us, Reid’s figures have weathered the elements and
certainly bare the scars, but are also capable of being
destroyed instantly by the slightest ill move.
The paradigm of their emotional responses and situations
facilitate our own tales of companionship and alienation, confusion
and clarity, social conformity and the carnal. Certainly, their
attractiveness is due to their endearing imperfection and cartoon
like qualities.
Reid explains: “Each day must be dove into or smashed through,”
which is a sentiment that has aptly been captured
in this new series of work.