Sweeney Reed at Strines Gallery, Carlton, c 1967, colour transparency, State Library Victoria

A quintessential child of Heide and Australian modernism, Sweeney Reed was fostered and then formally adopted by John and Sunday Reed after the marriage of his parents, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester, broke down. Returning to Melbourne after two years working in London’s contemporary art scene, Reed opened Strines Gallery in 1966, followed by Sweeney Reed Galleries in Fitzroy. As gallerist, publisher, poet and printmaker, Reed championed concrete poetry as a serious art form, supporting the careers of luminaries such as Shelton Lea, Alex Selenitsch and Russell Deeble. Sweeney Reed, named for TS Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes, took his own life at the age of 35.