Michael Reid Sydney is delighted to present our first exhibition from Naarm/Melbourne-based Indian-Australian artist Sid Pattni, who joined our stable of represented artists earlier this year and is currently a finalist in the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Titled The Act of Putting It Back Together, Pattni’s solo exhibition debut will be celebrated with an opening event on Thursday, 31 July, 6–8pm.

Pattni first captured the attention of our chairman and director, Michael Reid OAM, when his work was shortlisted for the National Emerging Art Prize in 2024. “His paintings made me go wow,” says Michael. “But what elevated Pattni for me was his compelling exploration of Indian-Anglo colonisation and immigration to Australia – then and now.”

Born in London and raised in Kenya before moving to Melbourne via Boorloo/Perth, Pattni says he first approached painting as a way to process the dissonance he felt navigating multiple cultural identities.​​​​ “I’m interested in how aesthetics shaped under empire can be reclaimed and reconfigured to tell new stories about migration, memory, and identity,” says the artist, whose work borrows and remixes elements from Mughal miniature paintings, Indian textiles, British botanical drawings and 19th-century Company Paintings.

“I return to themes of hybridity, belonging and erasure, referencing historical visual formats not as homage, but as a means of critique and reimagining.” Speaking with Belle magazine for a recent profile, the artist describes his latest series as a continuation of his engagement with colonial visual traditions.

“The floral borders, inspired by British botanical illustrations, are no longer literal – they’re invented, composite, almost dreamlike. They symbolise how cultural artefacts were appropriated and recontextualised during empire, and how these reinterpretations continue to influence diasporic self-perception. What feels new in this body of work is a deeper emotional intensity.” The Act of Putting It Back Together is a response to inherited ways of seeing and an invitation to look again – “more critically,” says Pattni.

For information and acquisition opportunities please email danielsoma@michaelreid.com.au