Caitlin Reilly is an Australian born multi-disciplinary artist living in Byron Bay, Australia. Caitlin has participated in many solo and group exhibitions in China and Australia. Her works have also been exhibited at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Shanghai Museum...
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Caitlin Reilly is an Australian born multi-disciplinary artist living in Byron Bay, Australia. Caitlin has participated in many solo and group exhibitions in China and Australia. Her works have also been exhibited at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Shanghai Museum of Art; the Xuhui Art Museum, Asia Contemporary Art Hong Kong 2014/15/16; Singapore Art Fair and 'Faces & Traces' retrospective at The Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, China.
In 2016 and 2017 Caitlin Reilly, Chinese based textile brand Shokay and the Taikang Community Group collaborated together in an inter-generational art exchange that connected young and old in a meaningful creative dialogue producing a collection of work that today is exhibited in The Taikang Songjiang premises in China. The scope of this project for cultural exchange and impact of ideas, and creative outcomes has pushed the boundaries of collaboration and made lasting relationships that continue to flourish beyond geographical, economical, age and social limitations.
A recipient of The Swatch Art Peace Hotel Artist in Residence program in 2014, Caitlin’s emphasis was on developing a means to counteract peripheral isolation while developing a creative exchange, working creatively, and living together with other artists in a dedicated environment in Shanghai. In the six months at Swatch Caitlin also travelled to Qinghai on the Western China and Tibetan plateau mapping the production chain for the Yak wool fiber company Shokay as the Shokay artist in residence. Caitlin and Shokay continue to collaborate in combining the mediums of painting and textile into a tactile meaningful creative exchange both culturally and cross disciplinary.
Whilst maintaining connection to China Caitlin continues to anchor her painting practice within the local landscape of the Byron Bay Hinterland and the local people. Insistence on daily practice takes her in situ to the edges of the roads that frame the countryside painting her journeying from Byron to her studio in Bangalow. Collaboration in the local for Reilly is a constant and her works are often exhibited in rural art prizes and regional Galleries holding a presence amongst contemporaries, connection is always the intention of her visual language.
Most recently Caitlin has developed a series of works 'I know you are here somewhere' these works are an extension to previous explorations of surface structure in painting, mapping an internal scape and an inner dialogue, suggestions of security and safety made real by ephemeral gestures, the act of application.
“My work is an expression of my love for the area in which I live. It is the intention that this feeling comes to life through my arts practice. In the last decade my understanding of home has been shared between Shanghai, China 2009-15 and Byron Bay, Australia 2016-21”