Benjamin Howe (born 1977 in London, England) is a contemporary Australian artist is known primarily for his figurative and experimental oil painting.[1]
He holds a Masters of fine art degree with distinction from RMIT University.
Howe is known for his scientific-surrealist imagery that is both hyper-realistic yet reductive.[2] His works have been referred to as ‘isolated or lonely’ and regularly feature a muted or monochromatic palette.[3] Howe's paintings are often derived from preliminary explorations in other media such as sculpture, photography, and film.[4] [5] His works frequently examine ideas relating to inconsistencies of memory, personal history and the nature of consciousness.[6] Howe's artwork has been exhibited worldwide. He has had 19 solo exhibitions, including 2 retrospectives, and his work has been included in more than 50 group shows.
Howe was the winner of the 2023 Eureka prize.[7] In 2021 he received an Honourable mention in the Beautiful Bizarre art award.[8] In 2019, Howe was a finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, and the Lester Prize. He has also been a finalist in the Black Swan Prize (2016), and the Metro 5 Award, (2012 and 2011). In 2017, he won the Hill Smith Prize at NotFair.He has been the recipient of residencies and fellowships including the Ucross Foundation, USA (2015), Shangyuan Art Museum, China (2014), and SKAM, Germany (2007).
Howe's paintings have been featured as cover art on several music releases (including ‘Graded’ by Cirex), book covers and reproduced in magazines and journals including Hi Fructose, Beautiful Bizarre, Selected Contemporary Artists of Australia, Double Dialogues and Out of Step Books. In 2019, his paintings were used in a new publication of Moby Dick, celebrating Herman Melville’s 200th anniversary.[9]
Howe was a finalist in the 2024 Archibald Prize for his portrait of Kylie Moore-Gilbert and Sami Shah.[10]
Howe created a series of miniature sculptures to simulate the idea and feeling of an assembly, without any attachment to an actual event.[11] The dioramas were photographed and rendered in paint, using a technique that appears photographic from a distance, yet becomes more abstracted and painterly with proximity. Repetition, miniaturisation, and fluctuations between representation and abstraction were used to activate links between the body, movement and memory.
This series reflects a more interior examination of the human psyche, and a counterbalance to Howe's work with crowds. It depicts the peculiar association of subject to physical space. The paintings document and explore the semi-conscious adaptation to new environments experienced by temporary residents; examining how people move into a space and start to inhabit it. Embracing a synthesis of both external and internal realities, the works interweave themes of dislocation, habitation and the subliminal response of the psyche towards the unknown. Howe's use of expressive brushwork, sharp contrasts and spatial distortions illuminate or add information while symbolic elements, informed by the subjects activity, or the artists own reaction to the space, further disrupt the illusion of sheer figurative representation.
Through a process of creating sculptures that reference aspects of the body and then subjecting the clay forms to dislocation and realignment, Howe reconfigure the Marquette to form new compositions and meanings. Cut, broken, compacted and rearranged, they are often unrecognizable in the finished paintings, which are contemplation on the fractured and subjective nature of memory, and the effect it has on the construction of identity.[12] He is known to destroy the sculptures and reuse the same block of clay for every piece.
These paintings address movement within the metropolitan environment, informed by research relating to the examination of aggregate behavior over various duration and viewpoints. Howe attempts to compress this information into single images by building overlapping layers of paint based on video footage and sequential photographs. The paintings are an attempt to show how collective elements reveal potential form over time; the individual and the city part of an integrated whole. Using the constraints and unique material attributes of paint including layering, color, texture and fluctuating levels of focus, Howe explores conflicting ideas of symbiosis, dislocation and placelessnes within contemporary life and the metropolitan crowd.
2022 Ashen Rainbow, Compendium Gallery, with Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne, Australia[13]
2022 The More Things Change, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne, Australia[14]
2019 Leviathan, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2018 A Strange Architecture, Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide, Australia
2017 Weave, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2017 Selection, Mycelium, Melbourne
2016 Themes of Dislocation and Habitation, St Francis, Melbourne
2015 Monochromatic Anomalies, Lorimer Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2014 Within the Grey, Shangyuan Museum of Modern Art, Beijing, China
2013 The Sum of its Parts, Metro Gallery, Melbourne
2012 Signs, Manyung Gallery, Melbourne
2011 Exploring Transience: locating meaning within the urban crowd. First Site Gallery, Melbourne
2010 Schism Overwrite, As Soon As Gallery, Hamburg
2009 Graffscapes, Manyung Gallery, Melbourne
2008 Urban Fractures 2, 5-502, Sydney
2007 Once Upon a Space, Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne
2007 Raumatisiert, Wir sind Woanders, European art festival, Hamburg
2007 Urban Fractures, SKAMraum, Hamburg
2006 Surface Variations, Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne
2004 Forms and shadows, Manyung Gallery, Melbourne
2003 Selected works, Manyung Gallery, Melbourne
2024 Antipodes 2024, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2023 Dark Art 2023, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2023 Antipodes 2023, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2022 Interconnected, New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM), NSW, Australia
2022 Throwback, 6 years of Beinart Gallery
2021 Dark Art, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2021 Lucid, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2021 Lucid Dreaming, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica, USA
2021 Antipodes, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2020 Dark Art, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2020 Antipodes, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2019 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Sydney
2019 Lester Prize, Art Gallery of WA, Perth Cultural Centre, WA.
2019 Dark Art, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2018 Australian Art, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2018 Ephemeral, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2018 Focal Point: New Realist Painting. Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide
2018 Dark Art Show, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2018 Bluethumb Award, Melbourne
2017 NotFair 2017, Melbourne
2017 The 13th Hour, Last Rites Gallery, New York, USA
2017 If Our days won't Last, Distinction Gallery, Escondido, CA, USA
2017 Art collecter starter kit, Corey Helford Gallery, Los Angeles, USAv2016 Metro Summer Show 2016, Melbourne
2016 Beinart Small Works 2016, Melbourne
2016 Metropolis, Manyung Gallery, Melbourne
2016 Transmogrify, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2016 Black Swan prize, Art Gallery of WA, WA.
2016 Beinart Inaugural Exhibition, Beinart Gallery, Melbourne
2015 Whyalla art prize exhibition, Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide
2014 Shangyuan Resident Artists 2014
2014 Ben Howe and HaHa – Second Story Studio, Melbournev2014 Strange Attractor, D11 Docklands
2013 Supporters Exhibition, D11 Docklands
2013 Urban, Manyung Gallery, Melbourne
2013 Your Old Self, Tinning Street Gallery, Melbourne
2012 Exploration 12. Flinders Land Gallery, Melbourne
2012 Melbourne Art fair, Exhibition Building, Melbourne
2012 Matter and Space. Ne Na Contemporary Art Space, Chiang Mai, Thailand
2012 Possibilities, Metro Gallery, Melbourne
2012 Dark Horse. The Dark Horse Experiment, Melbourne
2012 It's Not You, It's Me, Eckersley's Open Space Gallery, Melbourne
2012 Climate Change. Metro Gallery, Melbourne
2011 RMIT Master of Fine Art Graduate Exhibition. Gossard Project Space, Melbourne
2011 The Brunswick Show, Donkey Wheel House, Melbourne
2011 Space and the city, Eckersley's Open Space Gallery. Melbourne
2011 Surface: Texture, Materiality and Conceptual Plasticity, RMIT School of Art Gallery, Melbourne.
2010 SoBright, Prague, Melbourne
2010 New, Used and Abused, Loft Gallery, Melbourne
2010 The Brunswick Show, Donkey Wheel House, Melbourne
2010 Irene's Street art festival, Irene, Melbourne
2010 Out of Nowhere, 696 INK, Melbourne
2010 Grand Opening Show, 696 INK, Melbourne
2010 Urban Art 10A, Brunswick St Gallery, Melbourne
2009 Gaengeviertel, Hamburg
2009 Melbourne stencil festival, Collingwood, Melbourne
2009 Art Melbourne, Exhibition Building, Melbourne
2009 Painting 09A, Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne
2007 Stencil and Freeform Combinations, A.S.A, Hamburg
2007 Art Melbourne, Exhibition Building, Melbourne BSG stand
2003 Selected Contemporary Artists of Australia, Manyung Gallery, Melbourne
1997 Contingency, RMIT Graduate Show, Span Galleries, Melbourne