Guy Benfield was born in Sydney in 1964. An artist with a prodigious creative output including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, performance and video, Benfield’s interests and activities are united by a committment to investigating a process of evolutionary change through his art, each new project or piece growing out of a sometimes startlingly organic mutation. His works in video document and extend performances and studio practice with an emphasis on obscure fictions. S,SSW [2012] [aka Lovecraft] features a graphic montage of images including 1980s era photographs of pop musician David Sylvian, Asian food, Chanel logos and computer generated images before seguing into a sequence of Benfield facing camera attempting to lip sync to a playback of a voice reading a story. The video ends with a repeat of the opening montage. My Restaurant Is The Best [2010] is a montage of images of food, restaurants that, like S,SSW, is accompanied by deliberately 'cheesy’ synthesiser music.
Benfield has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, Lisbon, New York and Brooklyn. Benfield’s work has been included in group exhibitions at Le CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, France; BRIX Gallerie, Berlin; Artspace Sydney, Australia; the Monkey Town Semiennial, New York; the Shanghai Biennale, China; Atelierfrankfurt, Germany; Zacheta National Gallery, Poland; the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania; and Escola Maumaus, Lisbon. Benfield has received grants from the Australia Council for the Arts, Maumaus School for the Arts (Lisbon, Portugal), and Arts Victoria. His work has also been featured in publications such as Frieze, Flash Art,NYARTS Magazine, Art Review and Art World.
- Writers:
- Andrew Frost
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