Artscape - Ben Quilty and the Maggots

Since winning the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship in 2002, Ben Quilty's rise as one of Australia's leading young contemporary artists, is nothing short of phenomenal. Today, at only 36, he has a retrospective survey of his work touring.

Quilty's signature is paintings so thickly laden with luscious applications of paint that they literally ooze. Despite his success, it seems Quilty has never quite exorcised the hoon in him. His abstract interpretations of the booze-fuelled world of Australia's suburban bloke's culture have won him many fans.