Online Shop Ben Quilty has been widely recognised for his artwork. And why are they predominantly straight white men?I saw it time and time again during the Mercy campaign: when Quilty spoke of mercy, compassion and empathy – New Testament style concepts – it broke people open. Then I came back and I studied Aboriginal history and culture at Monash and it was entirely made up of a study of massacres.”Last modified on Sun 10 Mar 2019 23.04 GMTLisa Slade, who curated this exhibition says, “What he feels about the world is communicated so adroitly and so directly … with potency and relevance … No one is left out of the conversation.”Massacre sites feature in several of his works. Head or heart. Ben Quilty is one of Australia’s most famous living artists. Now it’s not quite like that.’‘These were done when I was angry.’ Omid Ali Avaz (2016) by Ben Quilty, part of the Life Vests series.It’s Quilty’s “fierce moral energy” that places him in the same category as other Australian storytellers such as Warwick Thornton, Helen Garner and Tim Winton,Quilty presumed trouble might come from religious people, claiming sacrilege. Borrowing from the psychological ink blot tests that are used to understand a subject’s perception, his paint is symmetrically mirrored on the left and right sides of the canvas, which can only hint at a site of historical trauma on the Australian landscape, invisible to most eyes. Look, I’m very lucky to be able to use my art to talk about these issues.”The newest work in the Quilty survey is a giant 12-panel painting, Inside the modern debt-collection industryThe Monthly September 2020 issue, print edition available to buy nowJuukan Gorge is gone, but will we act in time to save Warragamba Dam?He invited some of the servicemen and women he had met in Afghanistan to sit for him in his studio at Robertson in the NSW Southern Highlands, and they assumed poses of their own choosing. There are fears he could die in the night from overheating in the un-airconditioned sleep-out; “It won’t be a survey, it will be a retrospective,” someone jokes.He laughs. Instead, it was within the art world that the image and profile caused the most chatter and backlash. It’s extraordinary, as if he’s released some latent tenderness on a national scale.The party goes on into the night, famous faces and old friends dancing, drinking, taking selfies. “It took a day and I smashed it out. For him, their nakedness expressed both the strength and the frailty of the human condition in time of war. Until their voices are heard properly, it’s not my right.”Quilty, turning 46 this year, texted Slade after reading her essay, and said her analysis of his work was correct; he just hadn’t realised until now that his nervousness had shown through his thickly textured signature style. Acclaimed as a portraitist, Quilty creates thickly impastoed canvases using vibrant coloursand broad brush strokes that build up layers of paint. Their relationship is, in some ways, emblematic of Quilty’s rise through the ranks of Australian art, which has brought with it a coterie of influential friends including artists, curators and journalists.Ben Quilty transforms St Paul's Cathedral's Christmas tree into refugee tributePerhaps the problem is not with Quilty, per se; it’s that Australian culture is so small we seem to only have space for one rock star at a time. Ben Quilty’s painting is not polite. That was the response I made.The artwork continues Quilty’s mesmerising Rorschach series. After Adelaide, the survey will tourQueensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of NSW.He often weeps when he speaks of things close to his heart, and I’ve seen other people weep in response. Subtle, it is not.Which ones did Quilty paint with his head and which ones with his heart?It’s a couple of days before the opening of a major survey of his work at the I can see that too – the work in the survey is either sublime or shadow. To coincide with the ‘Quilty’ exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), the Children’s Art Centre worked with Ben Quilty to recreate the world of his studio. Come and see why. Smeared, smudged, caked and slapped onto the picture plane with bold virtuosity, his rich impasto works challenge assumptions. Just turn the mirror on yourself and it starts to reflect everything.”Quilty presumed trouble might come from religious people. In fact, all three essay writers contributing to the catalogue alighted on variations of this truth about Quilty the artist and the man.“My dad taught me as a kid – he had three sons who have all become proactive social/health/science commentators – and he homeschooled us and took us camping.