Anthony Lister
'Cap Me Once', 2011
Mixed Media on Canvas
198 x 192 cm
AUD$16,000

Anthony Lister was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1979, and later completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Queensland College of the Arts. He helped pioneer the stencil and street art movement in Brisbane before moving to New York in 2003 to work with his mentor, Max Gimblett. He met the New Zealand-born artist at the opening of Gimblett’s major solo exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery.

Consistently exhibiting around the world, Anthony Lister’s last shows in Milan and Los Angeles have turned his focus back to the human form and the female figure, his exhibitions largely consisting of ballet dancers. An interesting counterpoint to the recent Degas show in London, Lister presents a much more grimy, rough-hewn, but surprisingly delicate take on the bodies. “I am interested in culture, and society’s judgment systems on culture” he tells us when we ask about why he was drawn to them as a painter. “Ballerinas are kind of like strippers, only they don’t take their clothes off. I’m interested in breaking art. I’m interested in philosophy.”