Ben Quilty to sell part of his personal collection for superannuation
Among lots for sale is his Archibald Prize-winning portrait of Margaret Olley, and paintings done over the past 25 years that haven’t been shown before.
Ben Quilty with his dog Bear in his Southern Highlands studio. Sahlan Hayes
The earliest painting in an unusual exhibition by Archibald-winning artist Ben Quilty is of a suicide bomber in Gaza. Bomber was created before Quilty was a full-time artist, while he was working for Channel 7 as an overnight analyst monitoring images of atrocities being beamed, uncensored, onto a wall of screens.
His job was to evaluate which images could be shown on mainstream news broadcasts. Quilty watched the excruciating death of the bomber, whose device failed to detonate properly, leaving him to die slowly with his guts spilled on the ground.
