Celebrated Australian artist and social commentator Ben Quilty has recently opened his exhibition at Brisbane’s prestigious GOMA. Quilty offers an unprecedented insight into the incredibly socially engaged artist, who is committed to art’s capacity to instigate change.

The first major survey in a decade of one of Australia’s most acclaimed artists, Quilty features 70 works from the early 2000s to the present, including revisions of the Australian landscape, raw intimate self-portraits, and works inspired by harrowing recent visits to Lebanon, Syria and Greece where he witnessed first-hand the exodus of refugees.

In addition to the artist’s thickly layered, smudged and caked paintings from war zones and countries in distress, Quilty also highlights portraits of the artist’s friends and family, including large-scale sketches of artist Margaret Olley, who was a close muse and mentor to Ben.

Elsewhere in the gallery is an exhibition of more than 100 works by Margaret Olley as part of Margaret Olley: A Generous Life, coinciding with the Quilty exhibition.

Quilty most recently departed Art Gallery of South Australia, and will make its way to Art Gallery of New South Wales in November. You can read more about the exhibition here!

Quilty by Ben Quilty
June 29th – October 13th
Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art
Stanley Place
South Brisbane, Queensland