Architecture, Art and Photography
Book Details

Juan Davila

With Guy Brett and Roger Benjamin, and writings by Juan Davila

Juan Davila is an artist who firmly believes in the possibility of effecting social change through art.

Opinion

“Whille more palatable, Juan Davila’s work is still political” . . . “His work is strident and confronting”. Joyce Morgan, Sydney Morning Herald

“This is a timely book which makes a convincing case for Davila to be considered as an artist with a strong social conscience, one who is prepared to amuse and to offend people while attempting to educate them with powerful and confronting art works.” The Canberra Times 07/10/06

About this Title

Juan Davila is an artist who firmly believes in the possibility of effecting social change through art. Born in Santiago, Chile, Davila moved to Australia in 1974. It was a time of great political upheaval in his home country. His work had an immediate impact on the local art scene and he has since become one of Australia's most respected and innovative artists, with his work represented in all State and National art collections.

Davila's art sets to counter indifference in the community and spark intellectual discourse on many issues in the international cultural and political landscape. His work has critiqued directly the Australian political system, the greed of late capitalism, the oppression exerted by Western art history, the representation of sexuality, and the treatment of marginalised peoples, including Indigenous people in Australia and Chile and refugees.

This book features a powerful selection of paintings, installations and works on paper from the early 1970s to the present, as well as a selection of the artist's incisive essays and written commentary on key works. Newly commissioned texts by British curator and critic Guy Brett and Australian art historian and curator Roger Benjamin examine the contexts and development of Davila's work, indicating the scope and sources of his art in Latin American popular culture, Australian visual culture, the history of art, and political history.

Over the past three decades, Davila has used painting to interrogate cultural, sexual and social identities, resulting in a rich, complex, and provocative body of work that has consistently challenged dominant political and art-historical narratives from the perspective of Chile and Australia.

About the Author

Guy Brett is a London-based art critic, curator, and lecturer on art. He was Visual Arts Editor for the London weekly City Limits (1981-83) and Art Critic for The Times (1964-74) and has published widely in the international art press. He is the author of numerous books and essays on artists such as Derek Boshier, Lygia Clark, Eugenio Dittborn, Rose English, Victor Grippo, Mona Hatoum, Boris Gerrets, Susan Hiller, Li Yuan-chia, David Medalla, Hélio Oiticica, Gabriel Orozco, Lygia Pape, Cornelia Parker, João Penalva and Takis. He has organised a number of notable exhibitions, including Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists for the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Cornerhouse in Manchester (1990), and Force Fields: Phases of the Kinetic for MACBA in Barcelona and the Hayward Gallery in London (2000). His collection of essays, Carnival of Perception, was published in 2004.

Roger Benjamin is an art historian who trained in Melbourne and Philadelphia. A specialist on Matisse and the Fauves, he also writes on recent Australian and Aboriginal art. He has curated the exhibitions Matisse (Brisbane, 1995), Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee (Sydney, 1997), and Renoir and Algeria (Williamstown, Mass., 2003). His Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism and French North Africa won the Robert Motherwell Book Award for 2004. In 2003 he was appointed JW Power Professor of Art History & Visual Culture at the University of Sydney, where he directs the Power Institute. Roger Benjamin has followed Juan Davila's work since 1983.

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978-0-522-85244-8