Gria Shead

Born 1972
Lives and works in Sydney

Artist's CV

Represented by nanda\hobbs

Gria Shead sees, beyond the veil of conventional story-telling and hero worship, the breadth and contemporaneity of the experience of Otherness in the Australian context.

Gria Shead's technically astute paintings explore core human concerns: love, longing, displacement and discovery. She looks to earlier periods and environments in her quest to establish accurate references for a contemporary realisation of the issues of social justice, harmony and beauty.

Australian historiography privileges its patriot sons and their conquests over the country and adversity. Celebrated in words and images, legends were created by men about men, and white men at that. But what of the marginalised peoples in our early history: the women, the political refugees from old world England and Ireland, the deposed Indigenous people, and the early Chinese immigrants? Shead reviews our colonial and postcolonial history, finding that the forgotten not only contributed but also were, in many instances, the catalyst or inspiration for the stories we hold dear.

Shead’s oeuvre traces a trajectory on which may be plotted places and points of departure that she has transmuted with a jewel-like palette and technical verve and assurance.

Profile photo by Hugh Stewart

Read A Conversation with Jean Bedford and the ghost of Kate Kelly - by The Velvet Nap, which includes Gria Shead's painting Flash Kate. Jean Bedford published Sister Kate in 1982. It has recently been republished as an e-book. 

Read The Forgotten Kelly - by Ralph Hobbs, Sydney Morning Herald, July 5 2016
Read The Kate Kelly Story - The Art of Healing Magazine - Cover story, Vol 4, Issue 53, Dec/Jan 2016

 

 

\ Artworks

Always Bright with glittering sun

2019 \ Acrylic polymer on canvas \ 48 x 58cm framed

Breaker Kate

2014 \ Oil on canvas \ 101.5 x 111.5cm

Chasing the dragon

2015 \ oil on polyester \ 91x122cm

Chorus

2015 \ Oil on polyester \ 91x137cm

Dressing her wound

2019 \ Linocut / Edition of 50 \ 15 x 22.5cm

Family meeting after Fitzpatrick's visit

2019 \ Linocut / Edition of 50 \ 15 x 22.5cm

Flash Kate

2014 \ Oil on canvas \ 183x111.5cm

SOLD

For Each Man Marvelled

2019 \ Linocut / Edition of 50 \ 15 x 22.5cm

GLENROWAN AFTERMATH - THE SISTERS ARRIVE

2019 \ Linocut / Edition of 50 \ 15 x 22.5cm

Give him peace at last

2019 / Edition of 50 \ LInocut \ 15 x 22.5cm

In the district of gadi

2020 \ Acrylic on linen \ 55 x 66cm

Kate Kelly

2017 \ Oil on canvas \ 106x95.5cm

SOLD

Kate and Maggie

2019 \ Linocut / Edition of 50 \ 15 x 22.5cm

Kate and Maggie

2014 \ Oil on board \ 60x80cm

SOLD

Kate with Joe

2019 \ Hand coloured linocut / Edition of 50 \ 15 x 22.5cm

O.G Kate Kelly

2019 \ Giclee print from original lithograph and collage / Edition of 50 \ 80 x 100cm framed

Overland

2015 \ Oil on polyester \ 92x122cm

SOLD

Stringybark Masque

2015 \ Oil on polyester \ 122x92cm

SOLD

Swifts cut the thin air

2019 \ Acrylic polymer on canvas \ 54 x 64cm framed

SOLD

Sydney after the rain

2021 \ Oil on board \ 12.7 x 22.86cm

SOLD

Talent scout

2015 \ Oil on polyester \ 91x122cm

SOLD

The Green Room I

2015 \ Oil on polyester \ 92x122cm

SOLD

The Shade of Trees

2019 \ Acrylic polymer on canvas \ 59 x 47cm framed

SOLD

The Visitor

2019 \ Hand coloured linocut / Edition of 50 \ 15 x 22.5cm

True Blue Kelly

2019 \ Giclee print from original lithograph and collage / Edition of 50 \ 80 x 100cm framed

Valediction

2015 \ Oil on polyester \ 122x91cm

SOLD

when the first cattle drank in the dawn

2019 \ Acrylic polymer on canvas \ 49 x 59cm framed

\ News

News

Gria Shead on show at the Maitland Regional Art Gallery

9 February 2022

Work by Gria Shead from her Kate Kelly series is on show until 27 February at Maitland Regional Art Gallery in an exhibition titled, Storylines

Read more

\ Exhibitions featuring Gria Shead

9 x 5"

Group Exhibition

22 January — 6 February 2021

PLACE

Group Exhibition

21 January — 6 February 2021

MYTH

Group Exhibition

5 August — 22 August 2020

Gria Shead

En Plein Air | Works From the Sidney Nolan Trust

16 July — 31 July 2020

Summer Show

Group Exhibition

5 December — 22 December 2018

Summer Exhibition

Group Exhibition

6 December 2017 — 20 January 2018

Gria Shead

LA BELLE EPOQUE - Casinos and Cigars

10 November — 25 November 2016

Gria Shead

Gold Dust

15 September — 25 September 2015

Brave New World

Group Exhibition

18 August — 28 August 2015

Gria Shead

Flash Kate - The Forgotten Kelly

10 July — 25 July 2014

Gria Shead

Damned Whores on a Fatal Shore

4 July — 19 July 2013

Contact Us

to find out more about Gria Shead.

12 - 14 Meagher Street Chippendale, NSW 2008
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday, 9.00am - 5.30pm Saturday, 11am - 4pm