Juan Davila is one of the most innovative and influential painters to have worked in Australia over the past thirty years. Arriving in Australia from Chile in 1974, his consistent interrogation of cultural, sexual and social identities has resulted in a rich, complex and provocative body of work. A firm believer in the political role of the artist, Davila’s paintings have critiqued directly the Australian political system, the greed of late capitalism, the structures of the art world and the hegemony of Western art history, the representation of sexuality, and more recently, the treatment of refugees in Australian detention centres.
Juan Davila has shown widely throughout Australia and internationally. This is the first major exhibition to feature work from the full span of Davila’s career. It will feature paintings, installations and works on paper, including early Chilean works never before seen in Australia, epic murals of the 1980s and 1990s, and new work produced for the MCA exhibition. The exhibition will travel to the National Gallery of Victoria in 2006-2007, and is accompanied by a major publication, co-published by the MCA and Melbourne University Publishing, featuring commissioned essays by Professor Roger Benjamin and Guy Brett as well as selected texts by the artist.
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