Victoria Reichelt (born 1979) is an Australian painter and scholar whose practice examines the shifting relationship between the analogue and the digital, and the transformation of objects and images over time. Her work is grounded in close observation, often focusing on spaces and subjects that sit at the edge of obsolescence – libraries, archives, and collections – where systems of knowledge, memory, and accumulation begin to unravel.

Working across still life, portraiture, and architectural interiors, Reichelt renders her subjects with a precise yet luminous painterly approach. Books, shelves, and gathered objects are depicted in dense, immersive compositions, where repetition and excess become both visual and conceptual devices. Her surfaces are built through layered colour and light, creating a heightened sense of atmosphere that oscillates between clarity and disintegration. In more recent works, she has expanded her focus toward the domestic and the intimate, depicting scenes that reflect the rituals of care, labour, and repetition. Elaborately constructed objects and moments of everyday making become sites through which personal experience, memory, and time are explored, with the ordered world of books and knowledge often receding into the background.

“My painting practice investigates objects that are in danger of becoming obsolete or are in different states of change. For example, past works have depicted abandoned libraries, archive spaces and objects that speak to the aesthetics of collection, abundance and abandonment. More recently I have branched out into portraiture and historical imagery, while also documenting and memorialising places and things that are important to me, such as my own children and personal photos.” – Victoria Reichelt

Reichelt studied Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, graduating with a Doctor of Visual Arts in 2005. She has exhibited extensively since 2001 and was awarded the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2013. She has been a finalist in numerous major prizes including the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, R & M McGivern Prize, Portia Geach Memorial Award, Arthur Guy Memorial Prize, Still: National Still Life Award, and the Lester Prize. A major survey exhibition, Archive – Victoria Reichelt, was presented at Tweed Regional Gallery (2020–2021), and she was the subject of Colour Your Imagination – Just Add Books at HOTA Gallery (2023–2024). Her work is held in public collections nationally and internationally, including Artbank, QAGOMA, HOTA Gallery, Tweed Regional Gallery, Rockhampton Museum of Art, University of Wollongong, and Deakin University.