In her exhibition and book the boat I row, Annabelle Reidy takes ownership of her challenging service in the Australian navy.
Reflective in a self-effacing way, it is a beautifully crafted memoir which invites us to share a healing process made possible through exploring with an analogue camera and notebook in hand.
There is an ethereal dimension to Reidy’s photography — as if her work were from another time. Some of this is to do with her process: Reidy’s images are taken on analogue cameras and hand printed in a darkroom. These black and white film photographs and silver gelatin prints are, as such, individual creations. For an Australian audience they also transport us to an unfamiliar place: the sparse and otherworldly landscape of the Westfjords of Iceland.
And then there is the deeply personal why, which elevates her photographs and this story to a place where Reidy has navigated oceans and painful life experiences. Her journey in a uniformed machine started at a young age, with an open heart, noble intentions and, with hindsight, some naivety. Youth and idealism are ungainly friends in an institution as hard as battleship steel — where there is little comfort in a sea of malleable standards and unstable hierarchies.
Reidy’s the boat I row does not shy away from the ugly but it does bring her back to shore; wiser, grounded, and in a place where she can share herself and her art.
22 August 2026, 9 — 11am
Annabelle Reidy frequently works at the intersection of memory, place and identity. She is a photographic artist and darkroom printer based in Magandjin — Brisbane, Australia. Working exclusively with analogue materials and techniques, Reidy finds peace in every motion that takes place in composing and making an image, making it quite a meditative and ritualistic process.
Reidy grew up in the seaport town of Aberdeen in Scotland. Her family moved across in 2001 for her father to pursue a rugby coaching career. Lush, vast landscapes of the northeastern coast form her earliest memories. The family returned to Australia in 2007.
In 2016, on completion of her schooling in Queensland, she joined the n*vy. In the latter years of her n*val career, she picked up a film camera to document moments spent with friends on a deployment during Covid. The imagery taken was nothing extraordinary, but set the stage for Reidy’s journey deeper into the world of 35mm film.
She willingly became a civilian again in December 2022 and enrolled to study a degree in social work. She continues to shoot multiple formats of analogue films domestically and on her travels abroad.
the boat I row is Annabelle’s debut photobook and solo show.
