Art
"Listen, Learn & Embrace"
150x565cm - Tony Wilson
"This artwork is an Acknowledgement to Country and in the spirit of reconciliation.
This is a story about people sharing this land and this meeting place. It focuses on the "us" from an individual and a collective perspective, that we are interconnected. A reminder of the impact and opportunity in front of us, each day, and in each moment. And for a consideration to approach situations with 'heart' focus as well as our minds, on this shared journey towards better solutions.
I want to respectfully showcase my Kaurna culture within the design and the message of reconciliation which begins with 'Us'."
View the artwork in the Lobby at 60 King William Street. Learn more about Tony below.
About the Artist
Tony Wilson
Tony’s life has been marked by the ‘spaces between’ and his creative work is a vehicle to communicate and create spaces for others to step into, to stop and pause, to reconnect with the deeper, quieter parts of themselves. To observe, listen and deeply engage, not just ‘look at’.
Tony traces his lineage from Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri and Nurangga Nations through his mother and Italian heritage from Umbria and Puglia through his father. His creative process awakens the artistic practice he inherits from both cultures. He delves into portraiture, using Charcoal & oils as a medium, echoing the tradition of Italian renaissance art. He employs the contemporary use of acrylics and the symbolic use of dots by Aboriginal artists using abstract form to express his deeper historical story and connection.
Tony’s work can evoke the feeling of looking at the night sky and seeing stars exploding in the galaxies as they create themselves. Through the physical rhythm of putting paint on the surface, Tony generates patterns and visual ripples that seem to move over the canvas in gentle bursts of energy that emerge from a central point.
This movement of generating beginnings impacts on other objects in the space – the rhythm of one movement moving other spaces– the movement of all together, creating a new rhythm built into and over the old.
An integral part of Tony’s practice is travel. Tony has retraced his Italian lineage, travelling across waters that are the spaces between each of his cultural homes. Through a residency in Italy he explored his place in the collision of cultures created through the union of his mother and father that birthed him into this world, into his life journey. As Tony says “I am the space between my parents- Italian and Aboriginal”.
Tony shares the beauty of these journeys and invites- lures- the viewer in – using the visual to create a space for stillness, to stop a person in their tracks, to contemplate and feel the regenerative power of his physical expression of his meditative and creative practice. For Tony, visual art is a way to mirror and convey the emotive experiencing of nature, of being connected through the spaces between us, between us and nature, between places, between countries, between cultures, between each other.
His travel between spaces, across countries, over the waters between lands is a creative process of mapping self, mapping of spirit, mapping of the emotional journey of being human, mapping home.
His painting captures rhythms and frequencies felt in nature, unlocking and ultimately conveying and sharing, an inherited ancient understanding about the world that he is returning to, that sits just below the surface, continually returning him to himself and a sense of home.
