We are thrilled to present the latest release from leading contemporary Australian artist Joseph McGlennon. Titled The Hunt, this spectacular new suite of sweeping, panoramic scenes is a landmark entry in the artist’s celebrated body of work and the culmination of more than a decade of unparalleled photographic mastery.

The Hunt will debut with a special presentation from our offsite projects platform, Michael Reid Beyond, where the works will be staged against the handsome, gracefully weathered grandeur of an original colonial homestead – a suitably impressive setting for the artist’s singular blend of old-world drama, heft and historicism with his utterly contemporary vision.

The recipient of the 2015 Bowness Photography Prize – the country’s most prestigious award for photography – McGlennon’s work is held in numerous private and public art collections in Australia and abroad. His hybrid photographic practice is underpinned by an extraordinary technical rigour, producing images that meld lavish beauty with a powerful message about environmental fragility, colonial dislocation and the destructive folly of our attempts to dominate nature.

With his majestic recreations of animals in their habitats – from the first kangaroos seen by European eyes to the extinct Tasmanian Tiger fresh from killing its prey – the artist brings his subjects out of the realm of exotic specimen or historical curiosity and pushes them, living and breathing, into today.

Drawing on the primal tooth-and-claw drama of a 17th-century European deer hunt reimagined in the New World of colonial Australia, The Hunt marks a dazzling departure from the orthodoxies of contemporary photography by paying homage to the great Flemish painter Frans Snyders.

Looking back across time to march contemporary art forward, this collection of six new photographs channels the emotional elements of Snyder’s style: attention to detail, dramatic lighting and rich textures. These add depth and complexity to the narrative, emphasising the interplay between light and shadow and creating a sense of movement within each image.

The components of these sprawling, tapestry-like scenes were all captured on a trip through the rugged outback landscapes around Castle Rock in the Flinders Ranges area of South Australia. After shooting hundreds of individual photographs, McGlennon spends weeks layering and arranging them to arrive at his final composition.

“With The Hunt, McGlennon has conjured a photographic trojan horse clad in the vestiges of the master painters,” writes Michael Reid OAM.

To receive a preview of The Hunt by Joseph McGlennon, please email dean@michaelreid.com.au