Australian painter Ben Quilty's ironic take on the straight white male
The artist charts historical travesties and wounded masculinity in an attempt to find himself
Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm a straight white male, and in Australia it's a paradigm. Until recently, out of all the front bench ministers in the Australian government there was only one female — and all the rest are straight white males. So it is an ironic title, and in a way I'm trying to subvert that paradigm by examining myself. Much of my work is autobiographical.
I think the form of masculinity that I lived as a boy coming into adulthood was extremely regressive, but it has been a natural progression from that after the feminist movement. I think, and hope, that young men will have an easier time now — and my son, for example, will have a much easier time because I have a greater understanding of my role. My father was the first role model for the sons after the feminist movement.
I actually think that form of young masculinity is very normal in Australia. All young men have to go through it, because there's such a lack of initiation processes for men, so we make up our own rites of passage. If I hadn't gone through those things, no, my work would definitely not be like this.
Yeah, I'd always thought I'd do it. But like most young men, I went and got a proper job to fit into society. Strangely enough, being an artist is not accepted in my culture. But now, all my family think it's great. [ ] They've forgotten that they had told me, "No, don't do it."
They're disembodied. I felt that I wanted to show how frail the human constitution is in the face of something like war. Without their bodies, they're completely helpless. And the head is the site of all their emotional trauma. The subjects were not actually beheaded; they sat for me and I made the paintings in front of them.
Some of them were not so happy.
I'm an observer. Part of what I'm doing is humanitarian because I'm dealing with humans, and often, with justice. I think a part of my work is social commentary and, possibly, sometimes it borders on social activism. But really, in the end, it all still comes back to the fact that I'm trying to understand myself through these people's experiences.
In the '90s, there was criticism of Boris Mikhailov, the Ukrainian photographer, for taking advantage of his very poor subjects. The photographs are confrontational, very ugly, and are a real social commentary. But when I researched more, I found that he was referencing the community where he had come from. The poverty of these people was what had formed his opinion of himself — his work is referencing himself. I completely disagree with the criticism, because he's specifically trying to explore himself. I think it's the same with my work.
Not at all. The older I get, the more I realise that collectors buy work because it is free of fashion and ego, and it's honest. If you're trying to make work for someone else, then there's nothing honest about it.
