Look at any Quilty painting and there are vestiges of artists such as Chaim Soutine, Frank Auerbach and Philip Guston. All these abilities have been on display during his trusteeship at the AGNSW where he is believed to wield a disproportionate influence. Artist Ben Quilty confronts colonial denial with Aboriginal massacre site art works. Straight White Male is currently on show in Hong Kong at Pearl Lam Galleries, one of Asia’s premier contemporary art exhibitors and dealers. In the 1830s two young white male immigrants with guns are believed to have shot and killed the population that lived at Fairy Bower Falls. Ben Quilty's, Torana no. To see these paintings at the end of this show is the very best way of approaching them. He emerged as a figurative painter at a time when the art scene was acting as if painting was a relic of a bygone age, and made everybody take notice. Ben Quilty is at the Saatchi Gallery, London, from 4 July – 3 August 2014. Mirror image: Kuta Rorschach No. He hit upon a succession of themes that forced recognition, from Toranas and budgies, to babies and hamburgers, to the antics of drunken white males. There are probably lots of things he regrets, but this is counterbalanced by a self-confidence and conviction that has made him one of the few living Australian artists whose name rings a bell with the general public. The Inhabit series on show in Bendigo is from 2010, and moves from abstract and figurative images of Captain Cook into self-portraits and then, “Into obliteration,” Quilty says. In 2008, the prime minister of the day, Kevin Rudd, made an apology to Aboriginal people for all they have suffered since colonisation. “Often its not very pleasurable starting to use something else,” he adds. Quilty, in comparison, is a genuine risk-taker. His image of Captain Cook was borrowed from Nathaniel Dance's well-known portrait. Quilty is a remarkable artist and a remarkable person. He felt Quilty - winner of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship (2002), the Doug Moran Prize (2009), the Archibald Prize (2011) and this year's prestigious Prudential Eye Award for Contemporary Art - was making work that went to the heart of major issues. The survey show, Quilty, has just been launched at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and will travel on to the state galleries of Queensland and NSW. The Inhabit series on show in Bendigo is from 2010, and moves from abstract and figurative images of Captain Cook into self-portraits and then, “Into obliteration,” Quilty says. The 16 small canvases and one over-sized steel birdcage that make up the installation, Inhabit (2010) seemed like a bizarre departure when it was first shown. These ambitious, multi-panelled landscapes – which Quilty fashions by pressing canvas against canvas to get the mirrored image – are named for the famous psychological inkblot tests conceived by Dr Hermann Rorschach in the 20th century. But the thing about the arts is that by acknowledging places like [Fairy Bower Falls] you are really enriching the culture. His contribution is to paint these sites. Ben Quilty's Self-portrait after Afghanistan, 2012. The thing about confronting is you become more dynamic and powerful. Suddenly you have command over something that up until recently you had no idea how to use.”. To further complicate matters Quilty is having the show while he is a trustee of the AGNSW, which is a breach of the usual protocols. He’s the first Australian to have been granted a solo show at Saatchi, an institution with a reputation for igniting the careers of the emerging artists who show there and one of the most visited galleries in the world. It changed him at a deep level to learn about the extent of this horror – and how we fail to heal that gaping wound by not honouring these sites. The paintings are, “A light-hearted take on my own role in the colonisation of Australia, placing myself in that heritage,” he explains. Ben Quilty's, Torana no. ... lineage of white patriarchal colonial history starting with Captain Cook … Quilty gives us two images of it, just as there are two contested histories. "We were not related but we might easily have been. is at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, until June 2; Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, June 29-October 31; Art Gallery of NSW, November 9-February 2, 2020. He has seen such a layer in Germany, where taking cultural responsibility for the Holocaust has made the country heal, and also propelled it into being a cultural, creative and economic powerhouse. Credit:Mim Stirling. If Quilty is currently one of the annointed saints of contemporary Australian art he's a good match for St. Sebastian, the human target. The paintings are, “A light-hearted take on my own role in the colonisation of Australia, placing myself in that heritage,” he explains. It was pushing the envelope a little too far. The two giant landscape paintings in the exhibition also deal with the history of white settlement in Australia, specifically its darker parts. ", Ben Quilty is at Bendigo Art Gallery until March 1. bendigoartgallery.com.au. “I don’t want to over-theorise things, I just try and tell the truth about my own existence.”. The burden of white Australian history hangs heavy on the works of award-winning artist Ben Quilty. When he was asked by the revered Saatchi Gallery in London to be the first Australian to have a show there, it was centred on a series of his works dealing with issues around indigenous Australia and his own colonial heritage. I believe that in years to come, if we do acknowledge those places [of massacre] and commemorate them in the same way we commemorate battle sites from the First World War, we will become such a dynamic culture. The point is clear, but also cheap and useless. Quilty's theme was colonisation and the dark shadows it has thrown on Australian history. He’d just won first prize at the Prudential Eye Awards in Singapore, an honour that included a solo exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery in the middle of last year. Quilty's technique can be hit-or-miss, so a carefully selected survey is the very best way of looking at his work. He's a straight-talker who leaves one in no doubt as to his sincerity. His Irish, colonial blood runs back five generations. Take Captain James Cook’s* awkwardly-drawn faces morphing into a demonic version of the artists’s own guilt, for example (above). This hasn't put the brakes on his glorious ascent but neither has it left him unscarred. He had seen the psychological damage that eats away at those who serve. ", Quilty insists the paintings are autobiographical. That said, a wall panel is imperative [in an exhibition] explaining that [the site] is an unmarked Aboriginal massacre site. “I often make paintings with the idea that I’m making a sculpture in two-dimensional form,” Quilty explains.His porcelain heads are shiny and misshapen with melancholic or tormented expressions. Maps ©. One of the most significant episodes in Quilty's education was studying indigenous history at Monash University in the 1990s when he was introduced to one particular text cataloguing massacres of indigenous people. “To start using watercolours, for example, is very tedious and incredibly stressful. They seem less like an anomaly and more like the culmination of a slow-building, volcanic impulse. The starting point for works like Fairy Bower Roschach is, curiously, Quilty's experiences with traditional landscape painting. Broadsheet is a trade mark used under licence by Broadsheet Media Pty Ltd from BM IP Pty Ltd as trustee for the BM IP Trust. It sounds magical, secluded and full of promise, as if it might be a tranquil sanctuary. In every series there are art historical references. It is my history and I can't help but think I am implicated – if I don't think about it and talk about it then I am not just implicated, I am guilty of covering it up.". "Before the 1830s that place was continually being filled with the noise of singing and of children and families who had been using that place for thousands and thousands of years," Quilty says. Credit:Philip Betts-Murray Betts Group. View Ben Quilty’s artworks on artnet. For many people Quilty is defined by these campaigns. In recent years Quilty's evocative portraits have extended to porcelain forms and beyond the painted works that made him famous. Quilty says having a presence and, “Really serious representation in Asia has always been a goal.” His reputation, and his practice, is evolving. Many artists are happy to trumpet their own radicality while producing hermetic products for a small group of cognoscenti. In Conversation with Stephanie Bailey ... (2010), a series of sixteen impasto oil paintings depicting portraits that transition from the devil to Captain James Cook, to images of yourself, to a skull. While riding between politics and telling stories, he hopes to shape a better place and he thinks landscape painting is a beautiful way to tell those stories. "By putting myself in it I can tell it as a subject and willing participant, without sermonising. Others turn their work into a billboard for social and political issues. They are about, “A sense of place and identity and Australianness, and the fractured and flawed nature of my own Australianness,” he says. But once you learn how to use it, it’s like magic. It's often said that having a lot of enemies must mean you're doing something right. Ben Quilty’s exhibition runs until March 1 at Bendigo Art Gallery. He holds a degree in fine art (VCA) and a postgraduate diploma in art history (Melbourne University). If it's not too much of a contradiction he's also an instinctive social chameleon, able to adapt his persona to many different audiences. His admirers see him as a colourist but there are too many bright and bilious combinations to sustain that claim. "They are never signposted, they are never acknowledged, and our children don't know they exist," Quilty says. With the Afghanistan portraits he wasn't content to simply paint the soldiers at work, he wanted to get under their skin and into their heads. Oral histories – there are no written documents – report there were scores of children and adults present. Ben Quilty retrospective, Art Gallery of SA, 5 April 2019 ... Propagandizing does not automatically = bad art, of course, but it is, so to speak, a red flag. It’s difficult to imagine Quilty on edge, although it’s not surprising he felt nervous. These are not easy pictures to love, but neither are they the work of an artist resting on his laurels. I never want to have a political line.". To investigate that history and talk about the white colonial involvement in it is the exciting side of the coin – and so he began the journey of researching his family's history in Australia and began to place himself – or, at least, a "kind of humorous lineage of white patriarchal colonial history starting with Captain Cook and ending with me" – at the centre of some art works, all of them set in landscapes that were massacre sites. In the Afghanistan series, a nude portrait of Captain Kate Porter is reminiscent of Edvard Munch's Puberty, in its pose and sense of vulnerability. "And it is with a sense of shame that we ignore them. The Island (2013) in the Adelaide Biennial, drew on a Tasmanian landscape by Haughton Forrest. He's a straight-talker who leaves one in no doubt as to his sincerity. After taking his exploration of Australian identity and masculinity to Europe, the Archibald Prize-winning artist is in Victoria for a new exhibition.