Anthony Lister | Unslung Heroes | The Outsiders Gallery

I always try and visit The Outsiders Gallery when I'm in SoHo. This time they were exhibiting Anthony Lister's Unslung Heroes exhibition, I have seen his work before (you should go to his website and look at the pictures of his work on the street ) and these figurative pieces are amazing. The paintings are pretty big and similar to a Francis Bacon painting on the way that they have an incredible sense of movement (to a trained eye that is probably the worst comparison ever, but it was the first to come to my head as I walked around), but as you can see yourself in the paintings he creates the most incredible fluid lines and I don't actually know how many faces that guy up there ^ has? A few. 

 Here's a bit about him from the Outsiders website, 

'33 year-old Anthony Lister is hailed as the most compelling artistic talent coming out of Australia today. He has exhibited internationally to considerable acclaim, and been featured in Art Collector’s 50 Most Collectable Australian Artists. His 2007 painting Spider Woman recently sold at Lawson-Menzies auction house for just under AU$20,000, a personal record.

Anthony began his artistic career painting “awful” (in his own words) graffiti graduating to abstract landscapes on electricity junction boxes. A prolific worker he exhibits several times a year, consistently at Miami’s Art Basle festival. His most recent show in his home country took over an abandoned brothel, and an eponymous show earlier in 2012 in California featured ballerinas in group sex with dingoes.'

The exhibition is on show in both the Outsiders London and Newcastle Galleries until 29th December so you have plenty of time to go and check it out. Heres a little bit about the actual exhibition;

'For his all-new show, Anthony Lister – consistently described as “Australia’s best
contemporary artist” – has used his sketchbook featuring portraits of hip hedonistic
revellers, drawn at revels he’s attended, for inspiration. The elegant and sophisticated
figures in the paintings – also dubbed the ‘Party Life Series’ – may be a contrast to the
obnoxiously intoxicated international youth of today. But this is exemplary of the artist’s
most consistent theme: “I try to combine the highbrow and lowbrow,” says Lister,
“creating analogies which allow the viewer to feel comfortable with subjects that maybe
they’ve made snap judgements on before.”
On a surface level the content of Unslung Heroes marks a departure for Lister. The
artist’s past trademark has been paintings of super-powered ‘grey paladin’ characters
indulging in louche behaviour, more inclined to shoot laser beams from their sexual
organs than their eyes or gauntlets. “The super-heroes I always described as ‘misguiding
role models’. Well, the characters in Unslung Heroes are the products of those
bad role models. Also this whole show is about people without super-powers who
influence us. Super-heroes are just people in costumes after all.”'

You can read the rest right here,,,,,,,,,, http://www.theoutsiders.net/content/pdf/2012-11/anthony-lister-unslung-heroes/press.pdf