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The refurbished Reid Library Ground Floor is now open and to celebrate the opening we plan to have an artist in residence! The UWA Community is invited to vote on an art piece to decorate the inside of the Library.

Just inside the new main entrance to Reid Library is literally a blank canvas. The wall between the Library and the new café (due for completion in late-September 2016) is a highly visible and popular space on campus, with over 30,000 visitors per week entering the Reid Library.  The University Library, in conjunction with the UWA Cultural Precinct, have invited five artists to imagine how we can transform this wall into a piece of art. Their ideas have been represented as maquettes, currently on display in the Reid Library, and the artist whose maquette is most popular with the UWA community will be invited to turn their idea into a large mural on the Reid Library wall.

University Librarian, Jill Benn says “We are really excited by the opportunity to work with the UWA Cultural Precinct to install a contemporary art piece on the newly re-opened Reid Ground Floor. The Reid Library is a treasured and popular building at the heart of the Crawley campus and we are thrilled with the student reaction to the new 700 seat collaborative learning facility.  Student and staff engagement has been a key strategy in the development of the ground floor and so it’s appropriate we involve the UWA community in deciding which artwork to install.  We really look forward to seeing which artist is invited to take up residence in the Library, creating the mural to reflect our communal sense of place.”

The five submissions can be viewed in the Reid Library until 9 September 2016. We invite the UWA community, including students, staff, alumni and visitors to vote for their favourite submission at www.library.uwa.edu.au/about/mural

The artist whose piece receives the most votes between 9am on Friday 19th August 2016 and 5pm on Friday 2nd September 2016 will be given the task of transforming the wall. Visitors to the Reid Library will be able to watch the artist in residence developing the mural during the month of October 2016.