Anthony Lister was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1979, and later completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Queensland College of the Arts. He helped pioneer the stencil and street art movement in Brisbane before moving to New York in 2003 to work with his mentor, Max Gimblett. He met the New Zealand-born artist at the opening of Gimblett’s major solo exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery.
Lister borrows from his immediate surroundings, painting parodies of modern life. His influences are varied: graffiti, stencilling, installations, Pop art, comic book imagery, cartoons and his recollections of childhood when everything seemed fascinating and animated super-heroes ruled his television screen.
With bold and brash spontaneity and remarkable confidence he paints the complex contradictions of everyday life, and does so with an element of humour. He admits: ‘What I read, what I see, what I do, who I know and what I eat for lunch, it’s all relevant to me. I guess I am in a perpetual state of accepting the obvious as a valid source of inspiration. And it’s also very important that my work continues to be fun and exciting to me.’
Lister doesn’t separate art from social meaning. His imagery can be read as having a political and social message – good versus evil; right versus wrong, and Batman versus the Joker. His working method, with the subject-matter painted on large areas on monochromatic ground, has been developed to create a tension between figuration and abstraction which is evident in his series of Super-heroes. The subjects, often drawn from the media, indicate concern for how the human condition will evolve within the electronic and communications culture and the ever-changing, recyclable environment of today.
He has presented solo exhibitions in London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York, San Francisco and Sydney and is represented at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Ken McGregor
Lister borrows from his immediate surroundings, painting parodies of modern life. His influences are varied: graffiti, stencilling, installations, Pop art, comic book imagery, cartoons and his recollections of childhood when everything seemed fascinating and animated super-heroes ruled his television screen.
With bold and brash spontaneity and remarkable confidence he paints the complex contradictions of everyday life, and does so with an element of humour. He admits: ‘What I read, what I see, what I do, who I know and what I eat for lunch, it’s all relevant to me. I guess I am in a perpetual state of accepting the obvious as a valid source of inspiration. And it’s also very important that my work continues to be fun and exciting to me.’
Lister doesn’t separate art from social meaning. His imagery can be read as having a political and social message – good versus evil; right versus wrong, and Batman versus the Joker. His working method, with the subject-matter painted on large areas on monochromatic ground, has been developed to create a tension between figuration and abstraction which is evident in his series of Super-heroes. The subjects, often drawn from the media, indicate concern for how the human condition will evolve within the electronic and communications culture and the ever-changing, recyclable environment of today.
He has presented solo exhibitions in London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York, San Francisco and Sydney and is represented at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Ken McGregor
2009
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