Title & Date: Nude at the Fourth Test, 2006
Biography:
Anthony Bennett (born in 1966 in Mackay, Queensland) is an Australian artist . He has lived and worked in Tokyo, Rome and London and has exhibited nationally in Australia and internationally. He was a finalist in the Archibald Prize in 2009 for the second year running and was also a finalist in both the Wynne and Sulman Prizes for 2009.
In 2007 he was featured as one of the 'hot young queensland painters' interviewed on ABC TV's Sunday Arts programme and that year also won the Renault new generation art award at Art Sydney. He has also been a finalist in the prestigious Conrad Jupiters Art Prize, Sculpture by the Sea, The Schubert Ulrick Photographic Awards and the Cromwell's Art Prize. In 2004 he was awarded a Bundanon residency. Graduating from Griffith University Queensland College of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Art and majors in painting and sculpture in 1999.
Described in Art & Australia in 2006 as, a "potent anti-corporate poet" by reviewer Vikki Riley, his work uses the language and imagery of the everyday, appropriating pop culture with grabs from advertising, cartoons, music and movie stars and references respectful and otherwise to art history. He refers as much to Kierkegaard and Camus as Kath and Kim.
His imagery quotes from Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Brett Whiteley, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Cy Twombly. His titles are integral components and often mash words into the perceptive equation to play off the imagery, adding to the semantic game and augmenting the mood of dissent, while also revealing much about his practice. His work is contained in many private collections in Australia, New Zealand, Austria, China, Japan, Italy and England.Artist's folio site
Description of his influences:
Bennett paints every day. Pop culture becomes the words that he uses to construct his artistic sentences. "If the viewer is aware of Freud or Jung then a discussion of the ideas those heavyweight thinkers have provided us is in play. If the viewer is only aware of the last Hollywood version of 'Superman', but not Nietzsche's version then that might be just as relevant to them, but not necessarily the end of the story...." says Bennett.
"I don't really like conversations about art," he continues "because I think art is a visual language in and of itself and when you learn that language properly, why talk over the top of it."
