On the ropes

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Ben Holgate creates large scale detailed works in pen and ink, charcoal and mixed media that fascinate, engage, entrance and surprise. His pictures draw from a vast array of sources – memories and reflections, in-the-moment lived experience, cultural milestones in his life, people and idea for whom he has affection or disdain, his slightly bleak humour and his occasional dejection. Asked to summarise his practice Ben talks of, “social-political commentary with lumps of autobiography or nostalgia chucked in”. Somehow, it’s more than this though. The works amount to a picture of how we go about the business of thinking or making ideas. It is very raw and somewhat vulnerable. It deeply and openly reflects the artist’s personality. Visitors to exhibitions of the work are drawn in by the detail, the flashes of recognizing something meaningful to them and the warming alchemy of this shared experience.
In the words of one commentator seeing Ben’s major work, ‘The Bombing of Darwin’ at the National Works on Paper show in 2017, “The viewer is intrigued by the detail, entertained by the humour and finds guilty pleasure in the cruelty…it’s a kind of cabaret of a drawing”. A collector said, “…these works can absorb a great deal of looking at. Each day something new appears or I see something I know well in the picture, but in an altered light or with a different narrative”.
Whilst politics have been the primary theme of Ben’s recent work, this darker material is always leavened with humour, tangential references and scatological mischief. It is what it is.
Ben Holgate was born in Liverpool UK, just as the Beatles were making that city famous and after attending art college and London University entered a long career in advertising, marketing and most recently, fundraising. He moved to Australia in 1996 and most of his practice has been created in Australia.
Ben has had several solo shows in the last few years and his work has been selected as a finalist in three major drawing prizes in Australia.
Ben lives in Melbourne with his wife Andrea and their dog, Baxter. As a day job Ben is General Manager of Fundraising for a major disability sector charity and is also a director of The Wilderness Society.