STEPHEN BENWELLBEAUTY, ANARCHY, DESIRE—A RETROSPECTIVE
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Stephen Benwell is one of Australia’s most significant, critically acclaimed contemporary ceramicists whose work has developed from its earliest phase as a direct challenge to local and international pottery traditions and art-craft context. Over 40 years Benwell has combined the studio-based craft traditions and practical resolutions of the potter, with the conceptual painterly and sculptural concerns of the contemporary artist. His forms draw on a dizzying array of art-historical periods and styles, yet are stand-alone objects that resist conventional categorisation.
Statue, athlete
2011
earthenware
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
This 40-year survey assembles works from the early 1970s to the present day that exemplify Benwell’s distinctive practice: from early exquisitely patterned, eccentric forms that meld references to the archaic with natural and animal forms, through the evolution of large, freely painted hand-built pots and sculptural figures that embody an extraordinary life-force and communicate poignant narratives about landscape, masculinity, and the primary act of creating.
This publication offers an in-depth account of Benwell’s career as one of Australia’s most prominent contemporary artists whose work has explored the traditions of the potter as well as challenging the conventions of ceramics.
The 144-page book is fully illustrated in colour with written contributions by Janine Burke, Jason Smith and John McPhee.
Edited by Jason Smith
ISBN: 9781921330308
IN THE NEWS
“Entering the current Heide exhibition Stephen Benwell: Beauty, Anarchy, Desire – A Retrospective for the first time is quite an experience.”
Christopher Menz, Australian Book Review
The Nude Renewed (Stephen Benwell’s Naked Little Men)
W H Chong, crikey.com.au
“A retrospective at Heide spanning 40 years of production reveals an artist with a rare poetic sensibility”
Robert Nelson, The Age