Two New Installations
Featured in the 2021 Bonavista Biennale: The Tonic of Wildness
Includes indigenous, Newfoundland and Labrador, and other Canadian and international artists: asinnajaq, Christina Battle, Gerald Beaulieu, Vessela Brakalova, Melanie Colosimo, Marlene Creates, Will Gill, Jonathan S. Green, Marcia Huyer, Philippa Jones, Robyn Love, Logan MacDonald, Caroline Monnet + Ludovic Boney, Graeme Patterson, Michael Jonathon Pittman, Leslie Reid, Jerry Ropson, Janice Wright Cheney, curated by Patricia Grattan and Matthew Hills. And a special project, REGENERATION | Piguttaugiallavalliajuk | USSANITAUTEN: Seven Northern Labrador Photographers with Eldred Allen, Gary Andersen, Holly Andersen, Wayne Broomfield, Samantha Jacque, Melissa Tremblett, Jennie Williams, curated by Jessica Winters.
Learn more about all these artists.
After the Cryogenic (Snowball Earth), 2021, print on aluminum
Inversion, 2021, print in lightbox
March 9th, 2021
Virtual talk, Arctic Experience of a Southern Artist
For the Arctic Circle Group
March 8th to May 15th, 2021
Cantley XVI, 1995
Painting at Carleton University Art Gallery, featured in the exhibition Family Matters
Curated by students enrolled in CURA 5001, a seminar in the Graduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies at Carleton University, the exhibition brings together a range of prints, drawings, photographs and paintings by Lynn Donoghue, Evergon, George Hawken, Suzy Lake, Jane Martin, David Neel, Leslie Reid, Michael Schreier, Jeff Thomas, and unknown 19th-century photographers from CUAG’s collection.
"These works variously depict tender moments, document public and private spaces, index the everyday and explore familial roles and relationships."
Recording of April 22nd virtual event, Celebrate Family Matters with Jeff Thomas and Bear Witness
October 2020
Uluriak, 2017
Video featured in the Open Channels C3 virtual exhibition at the Frankfurt Book Fair
January 2020
Canada Council for the Arts, Concept to Realization Grant for Dark Ice, Ottawa Art Gallery exhibition, Leslie Reid and Robert Kautuk
December 12nd, 2019 to March 22nd, 2020
Pontiac III, 1980
Painting at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, featured in the exhibition Painting Nature with a Mirror
Presented as part of the series Pictures for an Exhibition. "This selective portrait of 1980s painting in Canada showcases twenty or so paintings and drawings from the collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, some on display here for the first time since they were acquired." Featured artists: Sylvie Bouchard, Joseph Branco, Gathie Falk, Betty Goodwin, Kathleen Graham, John Heward, Robert Houle, Lynn Hughes, Harold Klunder, Wanda Koop, Medrie MacPhee, Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe, Sandra Meigs, Ron Moppett, François Morelli, Leopold Plotek, Leslie Reid, Susan G. Scott, Joanne Tod, Carol Wainio, Shirley Wiitasalo.
A multi-media exhibition featuring 15 Canadian visual artists who took part in the Canada C3 expedition in 2017, sailing on the icebreaker Polar Prince from Toronto to Victoria, coast to coast to coast, to celebrate and respond to Canada's 150th anniversary. I was very privileged to sail on leg 9, through the Northwest Passage.
Curator: Melissa Rombout
Opening Reception: Tuesday, June 25th, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
In my short video, Uluriak (06:41), Uluriak Amarualik, one of the participants on the C3, talks of her life in the hamlet of Resolute, the barren shore to which her grandparents were sent in the High Arctic Relocation of 1953. She talks of her family, of travel, and of her reasons for joining the Canadian Rangers as a very young girl.
Uluriak (still)
March 2nd - 30th, 2019
« […] le voile de l’Illusion […] » “ […] the veil of deception […] ”
Group exhibition with Simon Belleau, Adam Bergeron, Mathieu Cardin, Jean-Philippe Harvey, Christian Messier, Mélanie Myers, Leslie Reid, Dominique Sirois, Anna Torma et Laurence Veri.
Curator: Jean-Michel Quirion
Opening Reception with the artists and the curator Saturday March 2nd, 3:00 - 6:30 p.m.
Resolute I: 1949-08-28; 2013-08-15, 2017. 23 1/4in. x 30in., etching on paper, edition of 9
2019
Ontario Arts Council Established Artist Grant
2019
City of Ottawa Arts Grant.
July 1st, 2018
Recently purchased by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cape Pine: The Station is now on view in the newly renovated and reinstalled J.S. McLean Centre of Indigenous and Canadian Art at the AGO.
Cape Pine: The Station, 2011, 60in x 96in, oil on canvas
June 11th - June 27th, 2018
The Arctic Circle – Svalbard, Norway
I will be participating with The Arctic Circle, an arts and science residency in the Norwegian Archipelago aboard the Antigua, a triple masted tall ship. We will sail in the waters and fjords of Svalbard, Norway.
The residency gathers visual artist, writers, performing artists, architects, scientists and others from around the world, to foster collaboration and to engage in central issues of our time, particularly with the environment and climate change.
Svalbard is a very remote region of islands in the High Arctic, glacier and ice bound, and home to many polar bears. It will be an adventure in all ways!
Photo mosaic printed on aluminum, 74 images, 7ft x 10ft, 2017
The mosaic is composed of historical black and white mapping photographs archived at the National Air Photo Library interwoven with my recent colour photographs of Ottawa and Northern Canada. The aluminum references flight and the structural material of aircraft.
The images create an intertwined narrative of time, place and memory. At its centre is the role played by the now-erased Rockliffe Air Station in the growth of Ottawa and the North, from 1930 to the present.
The historical photos and my colour photographs explore early and present day locations, centred on the site of Rockliffe Air Station and the city of Ottawa They chart its growth from a small colonial capital and lumber town to the city we know today. Early and recent aerial images also trace routes north of Ottawa, which the Royal Canadian Air Force Photo Squadrons photographed in the 1940s and 1950s, providing the images for the first accurate mapping of the North.
These photographs, through northern Quebec to Hudson's Bay, Churchill, Manitoba, Cape Dorset, Nunavut and on to the Northwest Passage and Resolute Bay, follow the route of the High Arctic Relocation of 1953, when several Inuit families were moved from their more southerly homes and resettled in the High Arctic, to an extreme and barren environment, as part of government programs aimed at strengthening Canadian sovereignty in the North at the start of the Cold War.
Detail: Flight Line: Erasure, digital print on aluminum, 2017
Digital image for Flight Line: Erasure, digital photographs on paper, 2017
April 2018
Global Affairs Canada purchases 2 paintings for its collection
Llewellyn II 59°04'N; 134°05'W, 2014, 32in x 50in, oil and graphite on canvas Kaskawulsh III 60°44'N; 138°04'W, 2014, 32in x 50in, oil and graphite on canvas
Llewellyn II 59°04'N; 134°05'W, 2014
Kaskawulsh III 60°44'N; 138°04'W, 2014
November 23rd - December 6th, 2017
Mapping the North
Galerie St-Laurent + Hill, Ottawa More information
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 23, 2017, 5-8 pm
Galerie St-Laurent + Hill is pleased to present an exhibition of works from her Northern travels by artist Leslie Reid.
Kaskawulsh IV (Disappointment River) 60°47'N; 138°14'W, 2015
Awarded the Canada C3 expedition Visual Artist residency for travel across the top of Canada in the High Arctic this August. Leslie Reid will join the icebreaker Polar Prince at Pond Inlet at the Northern tip of Baffin Island, and travel through the Northwest Passage to many Arctic sites and communities, including Beechey Island, Resolute Bay and Gjao Haven, and will disembark at Cambridge Bay. The trip will be an opportunity to continue her exploration of the Arctic and the effects of climate change on peoples and places in the North.
Canada C3 is the celebratory Canada 150 Signature Project organised by Students on Ice; it is an epic 150-day sailing journey from Toronto to Victoria via the Northwest Passage that will connect Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Artists, musicians, writers, journalists, scientists and athletes along with indigenous peoples and youth ambassadors will join the ship on each of its 15 legs around Canada’s three coasts.
Leslie Reid, Kingston, Ontario, June 4th, 2017
November 6th, 2017
The Good Lands: Canada Through the Eyes of Artists
A publication by curator Dr. Victoria Dickenson, contributors Dr. Gerald McMaster, Dr. Laura Brandon, Patricia Grattan, and Dr. Laurier Lacroix, with original essays by Naomi Fontaine and Lee Maracle, and a foreword by Senator Murray Sinclair.
Painting, Resolute II (Northwest Passage) 74°40’N; 94°55’W, 2016, from Mapping a Cold War, is featured.
"A book of images of this country as seen by our artists. This is a book to remind us that the land holds us, not we the land, and that we share our territories with the other sentient beings, with the forest and the grasslands, with the rocks and the rivers. This is a book to celebrate this place, a gift to Canadians to honour the beauty and power of our shared spaces, and a reminder that we all live by the gifts of the land. This is a book that acknowledges the power of art to reveal what is hidden, to make visible the landscapes of our imagination." Chapters.ca / Amazon.ca
Resolute II (Northwest Passage) 74°40’N; 94°55’W, 2016
April 22nd - 24th, 2016
Papier Art Fair, Montreal
Galerie Laroche/Joncas More information
Resolute II: 1951-07-08; 2013-08-15, 2016
February 26th – June 5th, 2016
Mapping a Cold War
A solo exhibition of paintings, video, historical and contemporary photographs from the artist’s residency with the Canadian Forces Artists Program in the Canadian North and High Arctic
Curator: Lindsey Sharman
10 year Anniversary Exhibition Part II
Group exhibition featuring Alan Belcher, Dan Brault, Gilles Mihalcean, Sylvie Readman, François Simard, Leslie Reid, Jana Sterbak
Llewellyn I 59°04'N; 134°05'W, 2015
32" x 50", Oil and graphite on canvas
The exhibition Glacial is the result of the artist's participation with the Canadian Forces Artists Program. Thank you to the military and civilian personnel who made this work possible.
Financial assistance from the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa is gratefully acknowledged.
Ottawa Magazine, Profiles Profiles: Arctic inspires new art by Leslie Reid, an article by Paul Gessell, posted November 14, 2014. The article first appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Ottawa Magazine
Canadian Forces Artist Program
Travel with Canadian Forces Op Nanook to Whitehorse, Yukon; Yellowknife, N.W.T.; Resolute, Nunavut; Iqaluit, Nunavut.
Aerial Photography for the Mapping Time project.
June 24th, 2013
Leslie Reid: A Darkening Vision
Catalogue Publication
The catalogue for Leslie Reid: A Darkening Vision, the retrospective exhibition held at the Carleton University Art Gallery in the fall of 2011, has just been released. Diana Nemiroff, Curator of the exhibition and Director of the Gallery at the time, has written the extensive text for the catalogue. Patrick Coté has designed the beautiful and very inclusive hard cover book.
The catalogue launch takes place on Monday, June 24th at 5:00 p.m. in the Carleton University Art Gallery.
Builders: The Canadian Biennial at the National Gallery of Canada
Opening November 1st
Two paintings, Cape Pine: The Road and Cape Pine: The Cairn, both 2011, recently purchased for the Gallery's collection are on view in this exhibition representing recent acquisitions by the National Gallery.
October 20th, 2012
Diana Nemiroff Symposium, Carleton University, Ottawa
Organised in honour of Diana Nemiroff.
Participant in the panel Artists and Museums/Galleries with Reesa Greenberg, Jonathan Shaughnessy, Carol Wainio and François Morelli.
Autumn 2012
Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal
Awarded for contributions to the Royal Canadian Academy of Art.
Monday, May 7th, 2012
An Embarrassment of Riches: The Collection in Focus
Recently purchased painting, Dargis II, 1976, on view in this group exhibition drawn from the Gallery's collection.
Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, May 7th to September 30th, 2012.
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
400 Women
Curated by Tamsin Challenger. Touring exhibition marking the death or disappearance of women along the Mexican-US border. A painting, Lourdes Gutierrez Rosales, 2011, one of the murdered women, on view.
At SugarCity, Amsterdam, May 3rd to 17th, 2012
Sunday, February 19th, 2012
New York book launch for The M Word:
Real Mothers in Contemporary Art
Eds. Myrel Chernick and Jennie Klein
Published by Demeter Press, 2011.
The anthology on artists working with issues of motherhood, includes the artist's article on maternal ambivalence and my work, as well as images from that period of painting.
Landscapes / Paysages
Group Exhibition with works by Ivan Chuikov, Janieta Eyre, Anselm Kiefer, Ron Martin, David Rabinovich, Leslie Reid, Richard Serra, Monika Weiss
After the Cryogenic (Snowball Earth), 2021, print on aluminum
Inversion, 2021, print in lightbox
Cantley XVI, 1995
Pontiac III, 1980
Uluriak (still)
Resolute I: 1949-08-28; 2013-08-15, 2017. 23 1/4in. x 30in., etching on paper, edition of 9
Photo credit: Sarah Gerats
Detail: Flight Line: Erasure, digital print on aluminum, 2017
Digital image for Flight Line: Erasure, digital photographs on paper, 2017
Llewellyn II 59°04'N; 134°05'W, 2014
Kaskawulsh IV (Disappointment River) 60°47'N; 138°14'W, 2015
Leslie Reid, Kingston, Ontario, June 4th, 2017
Resolute II (Northwest Passage) 74°40’N; 94°55’W, 2016
Resolute II: 1951-07-08; 2013-08-15, 2016
Resolute: Mosaic. Detail, 2015
Heartbeat, 2015
Cape Pine: The Station, 2009
Llewellyn I 59°04'N; 134°05'W, 2015
Cape Pine: The Barrens, 2013 
Dark Light: Harecastle, 2013 
