Zen teacher John Tarrant reminds us that, “Beneath or inside the life we lead every day is another life. This unseen life runs like a river beneath the city, beneath work, family, ambition, beneath our pleasures and our griefs.”

“There is another world”, says the poet Paul Éluard, “and it is inside this one.”

Jesse Boyd-Reid is a Melbourne-based contemporary artist, currently completing his Honours degree in Fine Arts (Photography) at the Victorian Collage of the Arts, Melbourne. Boyd-Reid’s work builds upon the long tradition of photographers who reflect upon the intimate vernacular of personal relationships to express an inner world of feeling. His photographic practice ranges from candid observations to constructed and staged documentations. He records the world as he encounters it through an inter-play of family, friends and the environment. In this era of hype and visual overload, Boyd-Reid’s quiet observations are an affirmation of the value of direct attention to lived experience. 

In 2018 Jesse Boyd-Reid was awarded the Lionel Gell Scholarship for Artistic Excellence and in 2019 he will be a participant of the Arctic Trust’s residency program in Svalbard, Norway. His work was recently included in the exhibitions Develop, at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne and Faux Pas at AIRspace Projects, Sydney. In 2020, Boyd-Reid will hold his first solo show at Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales.