Ben quilty invetigation

Introduction

Ben Quilty is a contemporary Australian artist and social commentator known for his expressive and politically engaged paintings. Living in Southern Highlands NSW, Quilty is a fifth-generation Australian of Irish descent and has become one of Australia’s most recognised contemporary painters, winning several prestigious prizes throughout his career, including the Archibald Prize (2011), and the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize (2009). He has a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Sydney collage of arts, Sydney university (1994), a certificate in Aboriginal Culture and History from Monash University, Melbourn 1996, and a Bachelor of Visual communications, School if design, University of Wester Australia in 2001

Quilty is well known for his thick vibrant canvases created using thick impasto oil paint usually on a big and bold scale, often using cake decorating tools in the application of paint, mimicking the movement of icing. Across his career, Quilty’s work has explored themes surrounding Australian identity, masculinity, and broader social issues, frequently reflecting the culture he grew up in and the complexities of Australia’s history. Through his expressive impasto style and powerful subject matter, Quilty had become an important figure in contemporary Australian art, using painting to challenge viewers to reflect on national identity, history, and social behaviours.

Influential factors

Ben Quilty Wass born in 1973 Kenthurst, Sydney Australia in a household where his mother taught him to draw from a young age. He grew up surrounded by the working-class Australian culture with his youth revolved around doing “typical” Aussie male activities of risk taking, such as drinking, rugs, and cars in an era where the masculinity of males was idealised. During university, Quilt hung with a close group of boys nicknamed the Maggots as “we were maggots, we didn’t fit in anywhere”. These friends would get smashed together to “find their right of passage” into their group. These risk-based experiences lead him to question the behaviour of young men. In the Sunday Morning Harolds he said, “Every so often when I was drinking and taking drugs to the point of getting violently ill with my mates, I’d start asking them, ‘Why are we doing this?’” With these thoughts in mind, he began to aim his artwork to challenge the presentation of the heroic male in pictures, by depicting his friends and himself while being drunk as well as cars as a symbol of the risk-taking culture of alcohol consumption.

In his piece One for the Road, he reflects on the dangerous culture among young Australian men. The painting depicts a loosely formed car constructed through brads gestural strokes. The vehicles doors are open with distorted proportions and blurred edges, creating movement that suggests a lack of control. The open doors ask the viewer to question the story behind the piece: “are they about to get in it? Have they just got out of it? Is it abandoned? Have they been arrested?” – Prof Germain Greer. The muted contrasting colour pallets – deep reds, blues, white and blacks – adds tension to the piece, hinting at danger or consequence. The title One for the road, directly references the common phrase associating having a final drink before leaving, reinforcing the connection between the drinking culture and reckless behaviours like drink driving. Through the abstract imagery, Quilty critiques the normalisation of these behaviours, suggesting their potential for harm.

One of his pieces called Self-portrait Smashed Rorschach, he created after recently losing 2 friends due to alcohol. One who drowned after falling out of at boat at a bachelor part, and the other dying due to pancreatic cancer. The piece is created using the Rorschach technique (often called Klecksography), where you blot paint or ink on a pice of paper, then immediately fold it in half creating a abstract symmetrical piece. In Quilty case for this painting, he created a thick 3d image with thick, impasto oil paint, then while the piece is still wet, he presses a second blank canvas onto the first, creating a mirrored, distorted and Rorschach-like inkblot image. This Self-portrait Smashed Rorschach painting depicts the artist looking up questioning himself, suggesting self-questioning the glorification of the risk-taking male activities. The word ‘smashed’ has a double meaning, describing the technique of squashing the canvases together, critiquing the culture of excessive drinking that contributed to the loss of his friends. Quilty’s use of dark muted blues, muted reds and flesh tones, create a heavy atmosphere, reinforcing grief and emotional weight of the deaths of his friends. Fast painting strokes create distorted shapes replacing a clear facial structure, breaking the figure into abstract forms that symbolise a fractured identity insinuating a unstable mental health. The symmetrical balance created through the Rorschach process introduces a visual harmony, yet the pressing of the papers creates an unbalanced paint layer. Using distortion, colours and textures, Quilty challenges traditional representations of masculinity and reveals vulnerability beneath the surface.

Building on his exploration of masculinity and identity, Ben Quilty studies into Aboriginal Culture and History led him towards exploring the Australian landscape with a post-colonial investigation. Quilt challenges the romantic landscape by acknowledging the deep and violent histories embedded within it. He states, “I personally feel that to make landscape painting here and not acknowledge 60000 years of people living on that landscape, I find that really tricky”.  This shows his urge to not only display the physical beauty of the Australian environment, but to confront the historical trauma and cultural memories that exist beneath the surface.

Aurthur Streeton was a key Australian impressionist artist, known for his landscape works capturing Australia’s unique space. His works portrayed the Australian environment as peaceful, harmonious and untouched, reflecting colonial ideologies that celebrated settlement overlooking indigenous presence. Streeton’s vison established a lasting tradition of landscape painting in Australia, primarily looking at light’s effects. Ben Quilty draws on this tradition using it as a point of critique, challenging the idealised image of the land and questioning histories excluded.

In his piece Evening shadows, Rorschach after Johnstone, he creates a reinterpretation of H.J. Johnstone’s 1880 painting which is famous for its serene portrayal of a Ngarrindjeri family camping along the River Murry shaped by a colonial perspective. While the original work presents a calm view or indigenous life through a colonial lens, Quilty disrupts this perspective by applying the Rorschach technique, folding and mirroring the painted surface to create a fragmented, symmetrical image. The blurred figures and distorted landscape, created through pastel pink toned colours, symbolise how indigenous history have been alter and supressed over time. Thick layers of oil paint add movement, seen in the water and trees, and texture, seen in the trees, transforming the peaceful seen to one that conveys emotional loss. Quilty explains that understanding his place as an artist brings “a responsibility to tell the broad story”, acknowledging the beauty of the landscape that also carries histories sorrows. Through this work, Quilty preserves the visual appeal of the landscape, while exposing the obscured reality of colonisation encouraging historical reflection on colonial events and its effects.

The Afghanistan war (2001-2021) gave Quilty a new subject matter to explore. In October 2001, Australian War Memorial commissioned Ben Quilty as an official war artist in Afghanistan to “interpret experiences of Australian defence fore personal participating in operation slipper”. Through these experiences, Quilty created a series of large-scale portraits, named After Afghanistan, that focus on the physicality of the soldiers, as well as the emotional and psychological consequences of service In an interview with between Quilty and the Australian war memorial, Ben Quilty says he was “very aware that I didn’t want to be in anyone’s way that I wanted to slot quietly into the background and observe what was happening simply because I had no idea what was going to happen”. But he quickly became engaged with the soldiers, wanting to know “what they are feeling, how they are surviving, emotionally and physically. His experienced prompted him to explore the ongoing PTSD that exist within the lives of returned soldiers focussing less on the war itself, but rather the human experience.

In his piece Troy Park after Afghanistan, paints the portrait of a soldier named Troy Parl. With a wide tonal range from the dark background to the brightness of his chests, Quilty focuses on the emotion and trauma experienced by the returning soldier.Quilty’s use of different colours in the soldier’s face creates an understanding of the many thoughts going on within the soldier. With his hair bending into the darkness, we can get a glimpse of the dark, scary things the soldier would have faced in his past. Ben Quilty uses quick, big strokes, giving this piece movement and depth, creating the story of the soldier, highlighting the need for mental health support and acknowledgement of the psychological vulnerability of soldiers returning from war.

Ben Quilty continues his painting using his art as a “mirror up to society” to “hopefully suggest ways to better ourselves”. In 2016-17, Quilty created a series of paintings “dedicated to the lost lives of asylum seekers”. In 2015-2016, record numbers of refuges from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan migrated to European and Australian shores. His impasto style painting, High Tide Mark, was the outcome of the artist traveling to Europe where he witnessed firsthand the global refugee crisis. On a beach in Lesbos, Quilty described the sight of countless discarded life vets along the coastline of the Greek island ad a “high tide mark of bright orange”. The piece itself depicts a lone bright orange life jacket suspended within the piece, contrasted against a deep purple background, transforming the object into a symbol of loss and absence. The contrast emphasises the absence of a figure representing anonymity of the user and the many refugees that died before reaching safety.  Using thick layers of oil paint Quilty builds a heavy, textured surface giving the vest a physical wight representing the lives connected to it. This work initiated a broader series of 12 painting with different empty life vests. Each vest, with a corresponding title, references the name of an individual who sought refuge in Australia and who took their own life in desperation before sanctuary was granted. Some of these individuals include Khodayar Amini, who set fire to himself because he believed he would be forced to return to Afghanistan, and Mohammad Nazari, who hung himself in Sydney overwhelmed with events and uncertainty surrounding a visa.

• Conclusion

Ben Quiltys artistic practice demonstrates how contemporary art can challenge social attitudes and encourage reflection. Through his distinctive impasto technique, expressive mark making and emotionally charged subject matter, Quilty explores the themes of masculinity, post-colonial history, war trauma and world crisis asking his viewers to question the expectations placed by society and the lenses on historical and political issues.

Across his career, his artworks have evolved from personal reflection on youth and identity to social and political investigations showing his growing awareness of responsibility as an artist within society. His belief in using art as a “profoundly powerful tool for change’ helps him to question the behaviour of society asking the community to change their standards and views on political and personal issues.

Critical analysis

Fairy Bower Rorschach depicts a beautiful waterfall that can be found in Bundanoon, New South Whales. Created after Ben Quilty discovered the violent colonial history connected to the site, believed to be where a large group of aboriginal people were killed during the 1830s. Quilty paints the falls using a Rorschach method to confront the two histories of the landscape – natural beauty alongside hidden violence and trauma. The symmetrical composition creates tension, with both panels being pressed together suggesting that dual and opposing truths can happen in the same space. Both sides are both impacted by the ‘squish’ in the Rorschach method, reinforcing the idea that beauty and brutality coexist and cannot be separated within Australia’s landscape.

The bright central waterfall acts as a focal point, drawing attention the location tied with historical violence. Its light colours against the dark surroundings emphasising the tension between appearance and truth. Fairy Bower Falls, being a well-known tourist destination, is a gorgeous fall but not many people learn of the colonial events that happened in that place.

The piece uses lots of natural greens, blues and whites to create the serene scene, initially suggesting peace and an admiration for the beauty of the Australian landscape. Tonal contrasting of dark browns and black seen in the rocks and ground, interrupt this harmony symbolising the suppressed histories and trauma embedded within the land, mirroring the clash often found between colonial narratives and indigenous histories. These layered colours in the foliage, water and rocks, suggest that though history is often hidden, it cannot be erased, still being visible beneath the surface. These colours a made through a thick impasto-style oil paint creating a rough surface. Ben Quitys aggressive application contradicts the calm waterfall subject making the paint appear to be wounded, which can be seen in the panels showing the different textures (water vs shrubbery), creating a metaphor for the land carrying scars of historical trauma. Through the application of paint, movement is created with vertical flowing lines mimicking flowing water, with the abstract bushland created through expressive paint marks guiding the viewer’s gaze downwards and towards the centre of the piece. The depth of the waterfall created through lines and tones, allows the movement to feel heavy rather than peaceful implying a dark secret kept within the water. The controlled composition of the piece gives a trapped effect, a compressed space merging and flattening the foreground and background, with a lack of clear depth denying the viewer to escape the truths of the past and look at other surrounding scenery.

The use of the Rorschach technique becomes a symbol and strategy transforming the landscape into a confrontation rather than purely an aesthetic scene. Quilty applies paint thickly onto one surface and presses another canvas against it, creating a mirrored image. The symmetry produces duplicated forms that are recognisable yet distorted, symbolising the ideas of ‘twin histories’ with beauty, alongside violence. The smearing and compression of paint during the process, visual suggests erasure and distortion of history, representing how indigenous histories have been obscured with dominant colonial narratives.

Fairy Bower Rorschach transforms a visually beautiful landscape into a reflection on Australia’s layers history. Through the Rorschach technique and expressive impasto paint, Quilty shows a coexistence of natural beauty and hidden colonial violence within the land, challenging viewers to reconsider the romanticised views of the Australian landscape.

Sonny 1 by Ben Quilty, is a painting depicting three-year-old Sonny, the son of a friend, with his face in a picture of pain after he had fallen when visiting Quilty’s studio. This painting is a part of Ben Quiltys 2024 “Sonny” series exhibited at Tolarno Galleries, where he uses the image across multiple works to explore pain and human vulnerability. It was also created as and emotional response to global violence involving children following the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel. Quilty states he “made one work for every child who was killed or kidnapped”. The work reflects Quilty’s broader practice of using portraiture to examine the human psychological and emotional

condition rather than physical state.

The child’s face is created warm reds, pinks and fleshy tones, paired with warm greens and blues seen on the right side of his face, that work together to communicate emotional trauma rather than a realistic appearance. Half of his face is left white creating a tonal contrast between the background and his face. This separates the image of the child from fully being a part of the trauma creating some identity for Sonny. In the composition, a deep purple surrounds the face adding a sense of emptiness and fear when paired with the pained facial expression. Soony’s closed eyes and open screaming mouth, are also painted with this colour, visually leading into the darkness extending the pain beyond the focal point of the screaming child. This suggests darker and overwhelming force that don’t just exist within the child, linking the personal suffering to broader political and human crises. The dark surrounding space also compresses the head, creating a trapped atmosphere mirroring the pain of the people trapped in Israel.

Quick, gestural brushworks show Quilty’s fast decision making and style. Seen in the strokes creating the human form, this quick brush marking creates movement throughout the piece, guiding the viewers gaze throughout the works. More movement is created through the drips of paint from his forehead and eyes, creating tears encouraging the atmosphere of sadness while also leading a viewer’s eyes around the piece with lines. The energetic strokes also suggest instability, commenting on humanity irrational quick decisions specifically linking the pain of the child to the political decisions surrounding attacks by Hamas on Israel, and its impact on everyday people. Quilty’s thick, aggressive paint application creates a rough surface adding to the pained expression on the child’s dace with the paint becoming a metaphor for trauma being physically in the artwork.

The distorted facial shapes reinforce the psychological focus of the work. Rather than presenting accurate proportions, Quilty exaggerates Sonny’s mouth and softens definition of the eyes and facial contours, breaking the stability normally associated with a portrait, using the organic and uneven shapes to suggest fragmentation. The central placement of the face creates a strong emphasis, forcing the viewer to directly confront the child’s pain. Although the composition appears balanced through the centred head, the uneven distribution of colour and brushwork create visual tension reflecting instability beneath the surface.

Through a combination of colour, texture, movement and distortion, Sonny 1 transforms a personal moment of injury into a broader commentary on humanity. Quilty connects individual suffering with global political reality showing how the consequences of conflict extend beyond the political field and into everyday lives.

Personal response

I personally connect strongly with Ben Quiltys work, because of his expressive impasto painting style and ability to communicate emotion. In works such as Sonny 1 and Self-portrait, Smashed Rorshach, I admire how Quilty focuses on emotional vulnerability rather than physical appearance. The distorted faces and thick layers of paint make the emotions feel raw and honest. His exploration of humanity, particularly in Self-portrait, Smashed Rorschach and One for the road, challenged the traditional ideas of strength that boys are expected to have, making his work feel honest and relatable.  His openness about his own experience with drugs and alcohol is awe inspiring in his ability to admit mistakes and look at them in a way that critiques how the world sets standards on genders. Personally, I dislike how women are often portrayed and the standards set on us, such as having to wear makeup and be skinny, to be pretty. Quality exploration of the standards set on his gender, publicly critiquing the social expectations, makes his work relatable and inspiring in the new way to speak about social issues.

I also admire Quilty’s appreciation of the Australian landscape, while acknowledging the truths embedded within it. When I moved to Australia 5 years ago, after living overseas all of my life, I didn’t realise the full effects of colonisation on our culture and indigenous identity. Now having learnt more about the land surrounding us, I find great interesting in knowing the history behind the place I am living in and surrounded by. In Quilty’s pieces Evening shadows, Rorschach after Johnston, and Fairy Bower Rorschach, he presets not just the beautiful nature but the complicated history behind it, using the Rorschach art technique. This makes me appreciate how a landscape painting can communicate cultural and political ideas, not just scenery.

I particularly enjoy Quilty’s use of the Rorschach prosses. The mirrored compositions seen in Self-portrait Smashed Rorschach, Evening shadows, Rorschach after Johnstone and Fairy Bower Rorschach, create distorted yet symmetrical pieced suggesting multiple meanings and perspectives. I find this technique engaging as it reminds me of painting in a similar way, as a child in the Philippines, folding paper to create mirrored inkblot images.