Sid Pattni joins Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin is now representating Sid Pattni, a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist whose work unpacks diasporic identity, memory and post-colonial aesthetics with profound visual impact. “I’m interested in how aesthetics shaped under empire can be reclaimed and reconfigured to tell new stories – stories about migration, memory and identity,” says Pattni.

Pattni’s work is rooted in hybridity, often weaving together historical visual languages – Mughal miniatures, Company paintings, colonial portraiture – as a form of critique and reclamation. “Painting became a way to process the dissonance I felt as someone navigating multiple cultural identities,” he reflects. “What feels new in this body of work is a deeper emotional intensity.”

Gallery founder Michael Reid first encountered Pattni’s work at the 2024 National Emerging Art Prize. “His paintings made me go wow,” says Reid. “Yes, he can paint, but what truly elevated Pattni for me was his compelling exploration through painting of Indian-Anglo colonisation and immigration to Australia, then and now.”

Born in London and raised in Kenya, Pattni has rapidly become one of Australia’s most exciting contemporary voices. His embroidered portrait of Mostafa “Moz” Azimitabar won the 2023 Kennedy Prize, and he was recently announced as a finalist in the 2025 Archibald Prize for Self-portrait (the act of putting it back together).

As noted in Art Collector’s Undiscovered issue by Eloise Lindeback, Pattni’s figures “exist between presence and erasure, belonging and displacement.” His practice, which layers painting with embroidery, challenges the divide between art and craft.

“That cultural richness shines through,” says Reid. “I greatly look forward to seeing him further explore contemporary Indian-Australian cultural ties through his art.”

Pattni’s debut Michael Reid Sydney solo exhibition will open in July 2025.