This month sees the opening of Guy James Whitworth’s fifth solo Australian show, Artist/Activist/Arsehole at the M2 Gallery in Surry Hills. Coincidently, the show syncronises with the London premiere of a documentary about Guy’s work, filmed over the last 12 months. Unplanned by Guy, both the film and exhibition open on the same night. Timing, indeed, is everything.
The exhibition’s title, Artist/Activist/Arsehole, is in reference to the three separate elements Guy believes any good artist needs to create: the practical ability, the wish to make social change and the ego and ambition needed to put that work out into the world.
Guy James Whitworth is certainly an artist with the ambition to go places. He is an upcoming artist to watch, but also an artist to listen to. Later this month he will be speaking about his series of bike paintings at the City of Sydney’s Rides the Night Festival, in the Botanic Gardens, in front of an audience of thousands of bicycle riders.
(As if the above weren’t enough, this month also sees the opening of The Salon Des Refuses in Victoria. The exhibition contains Guy’s celebrated portraits of national treasures William Yang and Michelle Frances Collocott.)
Whitworth is an artist with an agenda, using his work to bring together communities and attempting to break down the social barriers of prejudice and intolerance. And yet, he is still mostly unknown, even within the LGBTQI community that features so strongly in his work or the vegan community with whom he campaigns for animal rights and food equity.
Timing is everything and now is the time to catch Guy James Whitworth before he goes onto even more exciting things.
Artist/Activist/Arsehole
Guy James Whitworth
M2 Gallery
4/450 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills
November 26 – December 2, 2015
