Key Articles
Presence in Absence: Chris Reid's Dublin
by Sarah McAuliffe, December 2024
This essay is based on research into Chris Reid’s art practice over the last twenty five years. It makes coherent links between different bodies of work, from socially engaged public art work to personal photography to documentary photography that was made by Chris Reid over twenty four years (2000 – 2024). The essay is well-researched, succinct and weaves a coherent narrative from diverse approaches.
‘‘Whether photographing abandoned institutional and domestic spaces, or inserting memories of particular sites and events that took place within these areas through text works, Reid brilliantly imbues his art with life and feeling. His photographs and text-works are fully immersive and incite contemplation and reflection. He cleverly individualises the familiar and his projects contain an equally personal and universal appeal.’’
Figure and Ground: Reflections on the Practice of Chris Reid
by Professor Declan McGonagle, 2011
This essay narrates Chris Reid’s socially engaged art practice referencing works made between the years 2002 and 2011. This work uses text, photography and context as material. Declan McGonagles article looks at this sustained body of work and how it reformulates the exchange between the artist, the viewer and the art work.
‘‘Chris Reid’s practice challenges inherited ideas of commodity and the setting of the exchange, transaction or negotiation with the non-artist. The traditional idea of the viewer simply does not hold in relation to this work and the intentions behind it.’’
‘‘This is a very powerful model of practice precisely because it works outside of received notions of art production and distribution to include the ‘viewer’ in the making of meaning. Far from being reduced by the process, the location and the procedures developed by Reid, amplify the experience of the art in situ.’’
‘‘He (Chris Reid) manages to maintain a dynamic tension between his identity as a practitioner and the ground of community and context from which he draws meaning and to which he always returns value. It is this that I am proposing constitutes the innovation in Chris Reid’s practice.’’
'Figure and Ground: Reflections on the practice of Chris Reid' was published in the book 'Heirlooms & Hand-me-downs. Stories from Bride Street, Bride Road and the Rosser' in 2011.
