Andy Quilty paints new light into the male psyche

Award winning Australian artist Andy Quilty presents a new exhibition Dilligaf, an expressive exploration of notions surrounding hyper masculine suburban experience. Opening 20 May at Linton & Kay Galleries in Perth, Quilty takes the viewer on personal journey into his own social and working past within the industrial landscape of Western Australia.

Growing up in the southern Perth suburb of Rockingham, Quilty enquires into the heavily guarded emotions of the Australian suburban man.  The expressive portraits and highly symbolic abstract paintings are titled with everyday slang and expressions that draw reference to the engrained masculine attitudes in contemporary Australia.  Quilty’s past experience as a graphic designer and surfboard designer informs his use of bright sprays of colour, directional lines and graphic recurring symbols such as skulls, animals and flowers.  The abstract artworks are distinct in the ability to draw the viewer into the painting, to reflect and question the social, psychological and physical spaces inhabited by the suburban male.

In this particular series, Quilty’s characteristic use of the ballpoint pen and aerosol cans expands to utilise motorbike burnouts, industrial resin, auto-enamel for his art making process.  The unique use of materials directly references the experience of the artist’s past as a surfboard artist and labourer in the surfboard manufacture industry.  The erasable quality of the materials means that each mark is unique, raw and honest. The materials are a physical translation of the working man’s environment; with beers and burnouts every Friday night.  However what distinguishes Quilty is his ability to convey the blokey man’s unique emotional nuances, with his gestural strokes and sprays of paint.

Andy Quilty has received numerous accolades including the Madiar Art Award, Kalgoorlie Boulder Art Prize, RAS Art Award and the City of South Perth Emerging Artist Award.   Quilty is an artist with a highly expressive art style that tests and stretches boundaries in art practice, his refreshing exhibition will not disappoint.

20 May to 3 June, 2014
Linton and Kay Galleries, Perth
www.lintonandkay.com.au

Image Andy Quilty, Burnout painting #3 – The Cat, Motorbike burnout, oil, aerosol and enamel on aluminium composite, 117 x 81cm.

Image courtesy the artist and Linton & Kay Galleries, Perth