Indefatigable artist and gallerist Caitlin Reilly was preparing the latest multi-artist exhibition at her Station Street gallery when she learned she’d been accepted into one of the world’s top contemporary art competitions, ‘almost hyperventilating’ at the news. Digby Hildreth reports.
The prestigious Arte Laguna Prize has been welcoming and exhibiting emerging artists from all over the world since 2006, with the finalists’ work exhibited at the Arsenale Nord in Venice for three weeks in November – overlapping with the final weeks of the Venice Biennale.
Caitlin’s entry, an oil on canvas work titled Protection, is a larger version of a painting she made as part of a series named The Streets of this Town which was shown at Byron Bay’s Lone Goat Gallery in 2022. The series was an unflinching examination of the lives of rough sleepers in Byron Bay, and an attempt by her to make sense of the disturbing phenomenon.
More broadly, Caitlin says, Protection reflects her ongoing inquiry into home, belonging, and the fragile nature of place.
It is part of a new body of work called Taking Cover – the result of Caitlin’s returning to the paintings in the 2022 series, to give them a bigger treatment, and to explore the subject in greater depth.
Although she says that having finished the Streets series, it felt complete, she was forced to reconsider. Most of the works were not for sale and as she lived with them over time she struggled to understand what it was that she’d actually achieved. “I didn’t feel I had any idea what I was really inquiring about. It felt important to go back into that series. Those smaller works have turned out to be studies for these larger works.”
Anonymity was a guiding principle and no one’s face was shown in the paintings. But, after regularly seeing the same people in the same locations, she got to know a few of them, and showed them the work. “The reaction was ‘Oh, that’s amazing, that’s great, you can paint as many as you want’,” Caitlin says – perhaps a response from the rough sleepers to being seen by someone, and valued, rather than being routinely ignored.
The project challenged her to not shut down to what she was seeing, to resist becoming desensitized. As a result, it was not an easy experience: “It’s pretty harrowing, as every part of the painting became this kind of sorrowful experience.” It was also during COVID, and Caitlin felt acutely isolated, “away from my family, my kids weren’t here. And the experience of painting people sleeping on the street amplified that emotion”.
For a time the paintings were hanging on the walls of her Station Street gallery, in Bangalow, but she took them down after a while: “We’re all trying to make sense of what it is that we see in this or that picture, and it became this really big consuming conversation during the day that was really heavy” – and became heavier after the 2022 floods devastated parts of the region, and worsened the homelessness crisis.
The contrast between comfort and exclusion is stark in our region, nowhere more so than in Byron Bay, where natural beauty can mask the presence of deep social inequity, Caitlin says. “Protection aims to hold that tension – to make visible what is so often erased.”
Painting allowed her to slow down and stay with the image, to explore stillness, sorrow, and resilience in equal measure, giving weight to a subject so frequently overlooked, offering space for reflection rather than judgement, and insisting on the humanity of every subject. The same experience is offered the viewer, alongside an undeniable aesthetic enjoyment – the composition, the fall of light, the soft folds of the bedding material. In Protection it’s the contrast of the figure covered in a ghostly white sheet between a vibrant purple blanket on one side and a bright blue plastic milk crate. But the artistry does not take away from or disguise the raw reality of life on the street. The sleeper is curled around the crate, their only ‘furniture’, both a symbol of impoverishment and a frail barrier against a cold world.
It’s a tribute to the Arte Laguna that they should accept a painting with such a challenging subject.
The fact that it has been is “incredible”, Caitlin says. “A lucky dip. It’s not a healthy mental landscape to go into them with any expectation. I’m super excited and can’t quite believe it.”
It coinciding with the Venice Biennale is a bonus: “I’ll get to see some of my favourite artists.” And not only in Venice. Caitlin hasn’t been to Italy before so after Arte she will head to Florence and Rome.
A former finalist from the region, Mullumbimby interdisciplinary artist Karma Barnes, says she too is excited about Caitlin’s acceptance “and this significant recognition of her work… As a finalist in the 2024 edition, I can personally attest to the impact the opportunity can have on an artist’s career. The connections, visibility and international exposure I gained through Arte Laguna relationships that continue to shape my practice today.”
Karma is currently in China serving as an Arte Laguna Ambassador for a Shanghai exhibition, a reflection of the lasting value of the platform and its global network. “For contemporary artists, Venice remains one of the most important places in the world to present work and Arte Laguna provides an enriching and transformative experience that extends far beyond the exhibition itself. I’m delighted to see Caitlin joining that international community and look forward to seeing where the opportunity takes her.”
Only one other Australian artist, Lucy Humphrey from Sydney, is a finalist at the Venice competition.
For Caitlin, the international acknowledgement of the painting is deeply rewarding: “I’m really proud of this work, because for me it’s got such a human and heartfelt connection. It’s really close to my heart.”
And the empathy continues to ripple out.
“Protection offers a reflection of the contemporary world – one dark aspect of it anyway,” Caitlin says, “and it’s a kind of microcosm that is really hard to digest. Everyone I speak to feels overwhelmed by this, by the gap between the billionaires and the person on the street, and they’re trying to make sense of it. And, yeah, I get overwhelmed by it too. It makes me feel powerless.
“But the connection that comes from this work is just astounding; the stories that people tell me about their own experiences. As a result of this series, people feel like they can actually trust me with them.”