Ben Quilty
Ben Quilty’s painting is not polite. Smeared, smudged, caked and slapped onto the picture plane with bold virtuosity, his rich impasto works challenge assumptions. Using bold and unsettling subjects, Quilty explores the problematic relationship between the personal and the cultural.
Iconic imagery, animated by a textural third dimension, also becomes a vehicle for painterly meditations on the potency of painting. Emphatically expressive, they deny rumours that the medium is outmoded. Rather, their powerful and irresistible effect continues painting’s noble tradition as an antidote to complacency.
Sydney-based Quilty became a regular exhibitor after completing Bachelor degrees in both Visual Arts and Design at Sydney University. His work continues to draw critical acclaim with regular and highly successful solo exhibitions both in Australia and internationally.
Exhibitions
Ben Quilty
Trinkets
In this formidable new body of work, Quilty focuses almost exclusively on the human figure –especially heads, eyes and mouths – as he wrestles into existence urgently expressive, even grotesque, embodiments of the way many of us are feeling right now, the artist included. This collection of works, Ben’s trinkets, has all of this within […]
Explore
Ben Quilty
SHADOWED
Perhaps the central question then, in ‘Shadowed’, is the articulation of human difference, whether that be in our mental states or in our appearance. The vacuums and shadows generated by these processes are utilized fully, expressive tools and not accessories to form. Meanwhile, ‘The Daughter’, a familiar face for the artist, hums with a sickly incandescence, and might […]
Explore