ROBBY BENNETT

Press release

Presenting an exceptional new body of paintings, Bennett expands upon his distinctive visual language, drawing together antiquities, pastoral imagery and still-life traditions in a richly imaginative exploration of memory, symbolism and perception.

 Historical artefacts, fragments of landscape and symbolic objects are woven together through expressive painterly gestures, resulting in works that are both visually arresting and deeply evocative. Moving fluidly between observation and invention, Bennett constructs captivating pictorial worlds where the familiar and the imagined coexist, creating compositions that invite contemplation and discovery.

 Throughout the exhibition, celestial forms, architectural fragments, flowers, vessels and enigmatic figures drift between recognition and abstraction. Objects appear untethered from conventional space and time, forming poetic constellations of meaning that unfold through association rather than narrative.

Neither wholly landscape nor still life, these paintings occupy a liminal territory where memory, mythology and perception converge. Bennett composes immersive visual fields in which disparate elements coexist in delicate equilibrium, encouraging viewers to navigate relationships between past and present, reality and imagination, presence and absence.

Robby Bennett holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours First Class) from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney (2016), and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the National Art School (2015). Following solo exhibitions including The Music They Played Was Flowers at Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane (2025) and Beyond Darkness at CASSANDRA BIRD, Sydney (2024), Bennett has emerged as a very exciting contemporary painter. In 2025, he was awarded both The Vincent Prize and the Georges River Art Prize, and was a finalist in the MAC Yapang Art Prize and Gosford Art Prize. His work is held in public and private collections nationally and internationally.