Cliff Reid was born in the bush in 1947 at Wanarn in Western Australia. As a Ngaanyatjarra man, Cliff was raised understanding his Country as created and maintained by the ancestral figures and their laws. At the age of ten, Cliff moved to the Warburton Mission, established in 1934. In his formative years, Cliff attended the mission school while his parents continued to live in the bush, returning only to trade dingo scalps for stores, tinned meat, sugar, flour, and tea.

Life was busy and regimented for the young Cliff, who had fond memories of his time boarding as a student. Religious education was the pinnacle of the boy’s daily life, setting the measure of discipline that drove the flow of his daily routine. Cliff would spend his school holidays travelling with his parents across their Country, where he continued to learn the spiritual and biological order of his traditional lands. His religious education was balanced with cultural instruction from his family and his growing knowledge of Tjukurrpa, encompassing Ngaanyatjarra Law, Country and ancestral knowledge. Cliff would later reflect on how he valued the strict cultural instruction of both traditions. From these two pedagogical pillars sprang Cliff Reid’s unique craft of visual storytelling.

Reid later recalled leaving Warburton around 1960 and moving south towards Laverton, where he worked as a drover and yard hand. He returned to Warburton in 1970. He met and married his second wife Ruby, the daughter of Ngaanyatjarra lawman and leader Fred Forbes. Cliff’s marriage to Ruby provided the foundation for a lived reconciliation between Law and Christianity, a sentiment his father-in-law actively promoted and practised. Ruby was Cliff’s true love match, and the two were equal partners in life. When they followed Fred back to the family’s Country at Blackstone, Cliff and Ruby became closely involved with the community’s developing art centre. Papulankutja Artists was formally established in 2003 and incorporated as an Aboriginal corporation in 2004. Cliff and Ruby’s son Thomas Reid remembered him as a man whose curiosity and capacity across mediums would inspire other men in Blackstone to take up the brush.

Immediate, eclectic, raw and direct, Cliff Reid’s paintings reflect the vigour of the Ngaanyatjarra region. Uniquely shaped by parallel oral and visual storytelling traditions, his work is derived essentially from Ngaanyatjarra Law and its imprint in ancient rock art, reinforced by his exposure to Christianity. His distinctive style encompasses the cosmological expansiveness of Tjukurrpa and its demonstrative human elements. Cliff executed his paintings with a conceptual sophistication driven by his curiosity about the world and his desire to express traditional cultural pedagogy. By avoiding overworked technical elements, Cliff Reid enhanced the communicative function of his practice, becoming one of the most esteemed narrators of Ngaanyatjarra culture and one of the most distinctive artists of his time.

This survey presentation at Sydney Contemporary and online marks D Lan Galleries’ second presentation of the artist’s work, offering an opportunity to further explore the distinctive visual language and powerful ancestral narratives that define his practice.