Family Guy

Family guy is an exhibition that will convey the importance that the contemporary family has on men. As viewers, we seem accustomed to intimate female depictions of family, domesticity, parenthood, tenderness, and grief. However many contemporary male artists are seeking to redress this imbalance, reflecting changing social mores in which we see males playing an increasingly important role in the domestic sphere. It is true that many male artists in the past have utilised family members as subjects, yet many works in this exhibition go deeper. They talk of connections between family members and the role of being an absent father. They talk of loss, mortality, and the joy of being a new father. In essence, the works talk of the sense of belonging that family gives.

This exhibition will present an alternative view of masculinity, one that seeks to draw on the influence that family has on these artists own identity. It talks of how men see themselves as fathers, sons, partners and brothers. As all works in the exhibition draw on the artists own family, a sense of the personal and autobiographical will infuse the space. 

 

 

Image above:

Vernon Ah Kee, Mick Miller (Pop) from Fantasies of the good , 2004. charcoal on paper, 102 x 67.5cm

Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased 2006

Image courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art

Image below:

Ian Smith, Man without his children on an international flight, 2006. Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 120.5 x 117.5cm

courtesy of the artist and Heiser Gallery, Brisbane

image courtesy of the artist and Heiser Gallery, Brisbane

 

When

Location

Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie, 1A First Street, Booragul 2284  View in Google Maps