Lister: The Beautiful Misery

Overview

There’s a kind of pleasure in some despair. A satisfaction in a feeling fully expressed, or in a melancholic twinge of sweetness during an ostensibly miserable moment. Anthony Lister’s figures, which dominate the Beautiful Misery, seem lost in these sad moments. That’s the point. But in their sadness they stare at deep inner worlds that also seem to possess a satisfaction in an endless bleakness, well expressed.

Artist Anthony Lister is an Aussie artist made good at home and abroad, who describes his art making as “apocaloptimistical”. That is, exploring a happier apocalypse. And there is something of Golgotha in Lister’s expansive, black-rimmed canvases. A sadness, inevitability and meaning.

His figures, mostly women, are absorbed in contemplation. One woman picks the seeds from a watermelon. Another’s face has been replaced by a surrealist bloom of flowers. One of Lister’s other sidelines (not on show at Olsen) is in drawing dripping portraits of mainstream superheros. And, stylistically, this Lister show comes very close to alt-comic artist Ted McKeever’s apocalyptic vistas and wide, motive figures. But, where McKeever prefers sharp-lined or broad-shouldered subjects, Lister’s subjects dwell more on the voluptuous.

Lister’s subjects, though, seem less important than his point of view. And what he sees is a captivating, shaky and animate version of the world. Sidelines in still life at the show confirm this. A rough-edged rose, a luminous knife and a massive still life compilation “Still Life” only go to emphasise this vision of a dark, mutable world. These paintings, many oversize and looming, have nothing firm in them. Aside, that is, from Lister’s ramshackle and appealing artistic confidence.

Image: Lister, Still Life.