Knowing Ben Quilty and knowing his work means you know he enjoys the world he lives in. But his is not as an innocent view. The complexities and contradictions are there in both how these images emerge out of a visceral field of paint, big slabs of delicious embodied vision, and how they dissemble, how the faith we have in what they seem to be is questioned the more you look at them. How many times removed are we from what appear to be portraits of worthy citizens, the bird-life of the Australian bush (drawn on from the internet) and the possibly forlorn and desultory Torana either inviting us in or as the site of a quick getaway. Or has it been abandoned after a wild night out?

All these stories are possible and likely when looking at these paintings. This is what art can do. It can give back to us these vignettes of life, or present an image to us for the first time. So it is an intriguing puzzle and a visual pleasure to look at these works.

Su Baker September, 2004