Pearl Reilly-Murray is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, working primarily in oil painting. Her practice centers on themes of belonging, identity, and the subtle, everyday encounters through which we come to understand ourselves and our place in the world.

Having spent her formative years moving between Australia, Shanghai (China), and rural Portugal, Pearl’s cross-continental upbringing deeply informs her exploration of cultural exchange, connection, and community. These experiences shape her ongoing investigation into how we come together—how relationships, memory, and place intertwine to create meaning and a sense of home.

Through layered and reassembled imagery—blurring past belongings, distant figures, and reimagined animal forms—Pearl’s work invites viewers into a quiet dialogue between escapism and reality. Her paintings often act as intimate archives, preserving fleeting thoughts, lost objects, and personal mythologies, crafting spaces where memory and imagination meet.

With a background in film and communications, Pearl’s artistic practice extends beyond the studio. As the founder and current director of Oddaný, an artist-run initiative that supports emerging creatives through gallery exhibitions, events, and studios, she fosters community as a vital form of resistance against isolation. Her commitment to mutual care and shared responsibility drives both her art and her curatorial work, reflecting a deep devotion to what we owe one another and the roots we nurture together.

Pearl’s work and projects continually explore the tensions and harmonies between cultures, histories, and identities—searching for connection in the spaces between, and cultivating belonging in a complex, ever-shifting world.