Anthony White

Lives and works in Paris, France

Artist statement

Paris-based Australian artist working across disciplines of painting, collage and printmaking. Immigrated to France from Australia 2009. My practice is exploring the intersection of historical and current social issues and how they relate to the production of contemporary image making. My works are often characterised by an acute awareness of surface and a preoccupation with the engagement of physicality and the found object. The 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris was a catalysing moment for me to look at civilisation more broadly and how civilisation is linked to culture. I’m interested in considering collision points, shifts and ruptures at the site of geopolitical and cultural boundaries, particularly in relation to global immigration crisis. I am interested in reclaiming the radicality of the gestural mark as a form of dissent, to question the functioning of the Western ideals of sovereign power,democracy and the fallout of current foreign policy. Crossing the Rubicon, a previous body of work exhibited in Sydney in 2016, which stemmed from a consideration of Edward Said's notion of modernism as a transnational movement "inextricably linked to its history of colonialism, imperialism, war, and the outcomes of travel, commerce, media, immigration and imagination.” Echoing Said, Crossing the Rubicon referenced the role of culture in moments of rupture in post-war Japan and Ancient Rome as a way of interrogating the cultural mechanics of civilisations; the way in which...

Artwork