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gallery – John McRae Photography & Studio

Polly shows at new Sydney gallery

Polly helping me out by holding up the colour card for our shots in her Balmain studio.

Pollyxenia Joannou-Reddin is an award-winning Sydney-based contemporary artist working in painting, drawing, sculpture and installations.

She has only recently returned from spending a couple of years with her partner in London. London, however, is no stranger to Polly as she completed her MA in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins (UK).

The breaking news, however, is that Polly is having a new exhibition in a gallery on the fringe of the Sydney central business district, opening 23 August, 2023.


The work or process is a path that evolved rather than a conscious, academic process. I see the world or landscape as structured architectural codes; the repetition of lines; 3D structures of an urban landscape and what I perceive as unnecessary, I discard. I seek in my work a quiet corner. The work provides a pause or a resting place before moving on. I try and achieve this through colour palette, a balance of aesthetics via shapes, line, repetition, and materiality.” (Pollyxenia Joannou-Reddin)

I love Polly’s clean, intelligent work…so it’s a pleasure to photograph and contemplate each piece as we manoeuvre it into position for the final capture.

Check out Polly’s work at CBD Gallery in the city (until 23 September), a relatively new space which also runs workshops in various topics.

Laura Matthews – a new body of work

Artist extraordinaire Laura Matthews has recently completed a new body of work, which I happily photographed and documented at her inner-west studio in Sydney. Her paintings often look at how figures interact with expressive landscapes, including her recent series of underwater images. 

Laura is the product of the illustrious British art school, The University College London Slade School of Fine Art (informally known as “The Slade”). It is touted as one of the UK’s top institutions for art, design and experimentation. A notable teacher at the Slade was the well-known British painter Lucien Freud.

After her studies, Laura moved to Australia with her husband, where she has worked as an artist ever since.

I enjoyed photographing her recent work. I admire Laura’s draughtsmanship as well as the looseness of her painting. I love “painters who paint”. What I mean by this is that I appreciate painters who really push their colours around on the canvas … where you can see the medium of paint and their techniques.

Laura is represented by the gallery, NandaHobbs and you can visit her link on the gallery website here: