NOW SHOWING - Ben Quilty, ’The River’
There is a particular kind of quiet that can be found in descent, in heading down to some place. Not up to a lookout or out toward a horizon, but down into the base of a valley, where the walls rise steeply on all sides and the world is made to recede. In this body of work, Quilty turns downward to such a place: a river set deep within the landscape, where the scale and weight of the terrain is both oppressive and assuring.
Within this landscape, figures appear, almost intrusively. Quilty’s ongoing enquiry into masculinity finds a new articulation here, as men enter the scene not as passive observers, but as agents of disruption.
Holding axes, they hack into the very environment that surrounds them. The gesture is both literal and
symbolic, echoing broader cycles of extraction, consumption, and waste. Rendered as a commodity,
timber becomes product, product becomes trend, trend becomes discard. The rhythm is familiar, even banal.
There is a clear sense of disquiet beneath the surface of these works. Yet their beauty is not diminished by this but thickened and tangled by it. In the landscape, the threat is often imagined as something elemental or unknown, yet more often than not, it is human. These figures complicate the romanticism of place, unsettling any notion of it as purely restorative. Instead, the environment becomes a site of tension, where beauty and destruction coexist.
’The River’ is currently showing in the gallery and online until 6 June.
Image details:
(i) Ben Quilty, Axeman no. 1, 2026, oil on linen, 188.0 x 142.0 cm
(ii) Ben Quilty, The story, 2026, oil on linen, 188.0 x 142.5 cm
(iii) Ben Quilty, Axeman No. 2, 2026, oil on linen, 160.0 x 125.0 cm
(iv) Ben Quilty, Warship (the flight path), 2026, oil on linen, 188.0 x 142.0 cm
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