Anthony Lister

Private reception

Friday  4th November  2011

6 – 9pm

As the launch event is limited capacity we will not be able to accommodate everyone.
If you would like to attend, it is essential to register interest at rsvp@gallery.as

Gallery A.S. at 779 George Street, (near railway square) Sydney

Exhibition continues by appointment only. Please contact galleryas@galleryas.com.au

Gallery A.S. presents an ambitious production with Brisbane-born artist Anthony Lister. Much farther reaching than your white walled gallery exhibition, Gallery A.S. has positioned Lister’s new happening in an exhausted sex shop in Sydney’s Chinatown.

Bogan Paradise challenges conceptions of the Australian identity – those attributes perceived as both positive and negative. Euphemisms amount in the Australian vernacular to champion the quintessential Australian larrikin – a character that most other cultures would bluntly disregard. It’s the ‘she’ll be right’ laid back attitude that we exonerate as while we consent to and discount irresponsible acts.

Lister investigates the underside of such a responsibility-free society. We witness several incarnations of the ‘victimless crime’, a ‘no worries’ attitude to a future too far off for retribution – pissing in public, Mum smoking a bong, swearing at the televised footy match, burn-outs on the oval, amoral Queensland cops, desecration of wildlife, motorcycle gangs, and other petty misdemeanors as well as a few more personal crimes such as the home-made tattoo in the garage, sun-burn, a terrible haircut, an unhealthy obsession with sports or celebrity magazines.

Social commentators have oft questioned the larrikin streak in Australian culture, and have theorised about its origins. Some say that larrikinism arose as a reaction to corrupt, authority during Australia’s days as a penal colony, or as a reaction to norms of propriety imposed by officials from Britain on the young country and such disdain for arbitrary authority a reaction to of the often conservative norms of bourgeois Australia. What cannot be argued is that the larrikin is an important part of our culture and has emerged repeatedly, informing Australian contemporary art, popular and youth culture and political debate.

Bogan Paradise will be held in the top 3 floors of a dilapidated heritage listed, discreet George St Building. The convergence of Lister’s vision with this early Sydney building and recently de-zoned sex shop presents a unique context for Anthony to amplify his themes of wayward Australiana. The space will exist as several involving environments as a rabbit-warren of surprising installed, performative and interactive rooms.

Anthony Lister is a trailblazer with an international following and a general disregard for borders. A prolific street artist and painter Lister has managed to marry the empathy and abjection of 20th Century figuration with the irreverence of the contemporary pavement culture. His work shows a genuine affection for the human body, and also a tender understanding of the ways in which the demented, destructive, playful and powerful collide and coalesce.

Anthony Lister was born and raised in Brisbane, a metropolitan center and capital of Queensland, Australia. In 2001, he earned his Bachelor in Fine Arts at Queensland College of Art, and in 2003, moved to New York to continue his education under the tutelage of distinguished abstract painter and New Zealand native Max Gimblett.

He has since shown in solo and group exhibitions all over the world in commercial and institutional galleries, art fairs and prizes alike. His work is held in many collections of high esteem including the National Gallery of Australia and the BHP collection.

Gallery A.S. is Joseph Allen Shea‘s site-specific exhibition project. It’s vision is to create marriage and/or discord between architecture and contemporary art to bring interest and vigour to Sydney’s art and cultural domain.