Ben Howe’s paintings become less clear as you move closer towards them. “I suppose my work sits within a broader definition of hyperrealism: that it’s a perfect rendition of something that never existed,” he says. The painter works from multiple image sources, including photographs, video footage, and even sculptural maquettes, to construct layers of new ‘realities’.
He adds another point of focus in a new body of work that is being exhibited at Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide; these works study how people navigate the two extremes of crowds and isolation.
Some paintings in this exhibition are the result of a residency Howe undertook in Shangyuan, China, in 2015. As part of the residency, Howe observed other artists move into their barren temporary living quarters and recorded the process of adaptation and transformation over three months. This body of work is also partly informed by contemporary world events like the refugee crisis – Howe says they are a study of “temporary migration”. Despite the fact that these paintings depict other people, Howe refers to these paintings as self-portraits since they are also his memories of his time in China.
Howe created hundreds of clay figures as a starting point for simulated spaces and geographies. Once the canvases are painted, the clay figures are destroyed, leaving their image behind as memories of things that were only avatars in the first place.
New Paintings
Ben Howe
Hill Smith Gallery
6 September – 6 October
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Past meets present in Leyla Steven’s latest exhibition, now showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and co-curated by Artspace. The Australian-Balinese artists adopts a collaborative approach to restitution, scrutinising the systems of conservation and documentation we have inherited.
Josina Pumani’s electric ceramic work Maralinga—recently recognised at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards— deftly excavates a long-hidden past.
Isaac Julien’s 2022 video work Once Again…(Statues Never Die) exposes the unseen emotional registers inherent to the struggle for colonial repatriation by mapping the places where poetics and politics intersect.
