Stockroom – Michael Reid https://michaelreid.com.au Contemporary Art - Sydney & Berlin Fri, 16 Jan 2026 01:06:37 +0000 en-AU hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://michaelreid.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/MR-Sydney-logo.svg Stockroom – Michael Reid https://michaelreid.com.au 32 32 Son and Father, 2020/2021 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/son-and-father/ Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:43:34 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=37258 30 × 45 cm
Edition of 10 + 2 AP
$2,200, unframed 50 × 75 cm
Edition of 7 + 2 AP
$4,400, unframed 95 × 142.5 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
$9,800, unframed]]> 30 × 45 cm
Edition of 10 + 2 AP
$2,200, unframed 50 × 75 cm
Edition of 7 + 2 AP
$4,400, unframed 95 × 142.5 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
$9,800, unframed]]> Birds on Stage 11, 2020 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/birds-on-stage-11/ Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:29:58 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=37230 30 × 45 cm
Edition of 10 + 2 AP
$2,200, unframed 50 × 75 cm
Edition of 7 + 2 AP
$4,400, unframed 95 × 142.5 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
$9,800, unframed]]> 30 × 45 cm
Edition of 10 + 2 AP
$2,200, unframed 50 × 75 cm
Edition of 7 + 2 AP
$4,400, unframed 95 × 142.5 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
$9,800, unframed]]> Notes https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/notes/ Tue, 16 Dec 2025 13:25:31 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=37000 Thoughts, 2025 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/thoughts/ Tue, 16 Dec 2025 13:21:06 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=36999 How to Capture a Shooting Star, 2025 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/how-to-capture-a-shooting-star/ Mon, 15 Dec 2025 04:11:19 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=36802 Loaf, 2023 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/loaf/ Wed, 19 Nov 2025 01:21:16 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=36389 Two Loaves, 2023 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/two-loaves/ Wed, 19 Nov 2025 01:18:15 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=36386 Lemon and Loaf, 2023 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/lemon-and-loaf/ Wed, 19 Nov 2025 01:09:20 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=36384 I Like the Blue Sea, 2000 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/i-like-the-blue-sea/ Tue, 18 Nov 2025 22:22:35 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=36378 Born in China in 1962/63, Guo Jian was raised within a highly controlled political environment. He served for more than three years as a propaganda-poster painter in the People’s Liberation Army and, as an arts student in Beijing, witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, where he assisted in carrying the wounded to hospital.

Guo Jian’s personal atlas of history continues to feed his visual commentary. His voice is satirical and erotic, challenging and confronting. He plays with irony and foreplay to expose and question the machinery of propaganda, persuasion and manipulation. Drawing upon both his lived experience and the language of mass spectacle, his work often aligns with the broader current of Chinese “Cynical Realism” – artists responding to the collapse of ideological certainty in post-Mao China.

I Like the Blue Sea is a major painting from a pivotal period in Guo Jian’s practice, created shortly after his relocation to Australia in the early 1990s and at a moment when his lexicon of soldiers, entertainers and staged militarism had fully matured. The ambitious scale of the diptych underscores its significance. The title hints at the seductive veneer of leisure and freedom – a “blue sea” of desire – set in tension with the rigid, performative world of military spectacle. This collision of fantasy and discipline is central to Guo Jian’s critique: how both state power and popular culture deploy beauty, sexuality and spectacle to shape belief.

The painting gains further strength through its early institutional exposure, shown at both the Canberra Contemporary Art Space and Heide Museum of Modern Art in 2000–01. Positioned alongside its companion work Trigger Happy in the National Gallery of Australia, I Like the Blue Sea stands as an important example of Guo Jian’s mature, internationally recognised engagement with propaganda, memory, trauma and the negotiation of identity between China and the West.

]]> The New Crop, 1932 https://michaelreid.com.au/stock/the-new-crop/ Tue, 04 Nov 2025 23:30:55 +0000 https://michaelreid.com.au/?post_type=product&p=36061 signed and dated lower right : ‘Gruner 1932’

 

PROVENANCE
Mr and Mrs Saul Symonds, Sydney
Thence by descent, Mrs Naomi Hoenig, London
Private collection, Sydney
Sotheby’s, Important Australian Art, Melbourne, 20 April 2010, Lot 39 ($38,400)
Private collection, Perth

EXHIBITED
Society of Artists’ Annual Exhibition, Education Department’s Art Gallery, Sydney, 2-30 September 1932, no.109
Exhibition of the Works of Elioth Gruner, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 21 December 1933 – 21 February 1934, no. 19
The Centenary Art Exhibition, Commonwealth Bank Chambers, Melbourne, 1934, no. 178
Elioth Gruner 1883-1939, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 13 July – 4 September 1983, no. 63, The Young Crop

LITERATURE
Smith, Ure. Elioth Gruner’s Oil Paintings. Art in Australia, Sydney, 3rd Series, No. 50, June 1933, p.23 (illustrated)
Pearce, Barry. Elioth Gruner 1883-1939, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 13 July – 4 September 1983, p. 27 (illustrated)

 

SELECTED MAJOR ART COLLECTIONS
Art Gallery of Ballarat, Australia
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia
Art Gallery of South Australia, Australia
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Australia
Bendigo Art Gallery, Australia
Geelong Gallery, Australia
National Gallery of Australia, Australia
National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Australia
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Australia
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Australia

 

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