Dan Withey
Dan Withey returns with his third solo exhibition, presenting a new suite of colourful and animated paintings that express the forces of life.
His third solo exhibition at Hillsmith Gallery, the exhibition times in with the current state wide festival in South Australia. Established in 1998, The South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival is an annual celebration of South Australian living visual artists.
In this major expose and month for South Australia, Withey’s works are well suited to pack a punch and stand out. The new body of work examines the impact of the environment on our lives and the way our lives impact the environment.
“The concept for ‘External Drivers’ is about the things that drive us in life – the struggles of being alive and how we respond to situations and environments that we find ourselves in – whether natural or unnatural and the conflicting nature of the two”, states Withey.
With a strong grasp of subject, Withey challenges the viewer with this intricate and bold semi-abstract compositions.
The exhibition will feature new paintings, including two large-scale canvases that evoke through Withey’s characteristic way, the chaos and humor in contemporary society. Withey’s ability to observe the unusual within the mundane is a hallmark of his practice.
Finely rendered, colourful compositions, vibrant characters and symbols, all converge in this exhibition. His semi-autobiographic approach is one that is relatable; evocative of the collective dilemmas of living in a society of instant news feeds and the pressures of survival.
EXHIBITION
External Drivers | Dan Withey
Until 26 August 2017
Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide
Courtesy the artist and Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide.
The first work you encounter in Edge City is a gate, Settlement #8, 2025. Not one to pass through (not anymore), but a threshold nonetheless....
Designed to impress, the number and size of paintings—twenty-nine at nine square metres each and one even bigger—are a spectacle, lifting the exhibition from an...
Skilfully assimilating secondary sources throughout Paris in Ruins, Smee at the conclusion of Part One, “Salon of 1869,” writes that Auguste Renoir’s and Claude Monet’s...
Multidisciplinary artist Shireen Taweel looks skyward, into the night and beyond, with her exhibition the trig point. Drawing on fieldwork in 2025 at the Siding...
It was back in 2011 that Pip Wallis, senior curator at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), remembers first seeing the work of Balinese...
Senior Pitjantjatjara artist, Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin, was born in 1952 near Bumbali Creek in the Northern Territory, close to the border with South Australia; daughter...
For those of us who seek out unfamiliar voices and see the potential for diverse cultures to create new meanings and memories in a postcolonial...
Show me the beauty of a body contorted by thrall. Then, show me the thrall. Shame is a vast word....
Kon Gouriotis: How did you come to be working with the Yinhawangka community? Pedram Khosronejad: My journey to working with the Yinhawangka community has...