Image:
Tony LLOYD
The Improbability of Love 2022
oil on linen
91 x 153 cm
17th Mar — 7th May 2023
Bennett Gallery
Painted from both photographs and memory, Tony Lloyd presents High Plains Drift, a selection of oil paintings inspired by hiking trips around Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland. Evoking the vast and epic landscapes of the High Country near to Benalla, these hyperreal landscapes go beyond pictorial representation. They occupy the same rarefied air as the landscapes themselves, and through their exacting execution, have audiences questioning the slippery space between reality and fantasy.
Of the works, Lloyd explains, “The specific locations are not as important to me as the creation of a psychological space. The landscape is so much bigger than us. Looking at it you feel small. It’s connected to the sublime but not in a dramatic way, in a quiet way.”
About the Artist
Tony Lloyd began exhibiting while still an undergraduate student at RMIT University. A successful exhibition in his second year financed a trip to New York in the summer break and the art he encountered there proved to be a formative educational experience.
Since gaining his Masters degree in 2001 Lloyd has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. His paintings are in numerous public collections including the State Library of Victoria, Gippsland Art Gallery, RMIT Gallery, Artbank, the City of Boroondara and the City of Whitehorse. Lloyd’s work has featured in publications such as ART + Climate = Change from Melbourne University Press and New Romantics, Darkness and light in Australian Art by curator Simon Gregg. His works were also featured in ABC TV’s The A-Z of Contemporary Art.
Lloyd has had several artist residencies including The British School at Rome, 24HR ART Beijing, and Canvas International Art in the Netherlands. Lloyd has received recognitions for his work, winning the John Leslie Art Prize, the Belle Arti Prize, the Sulman Prize Highly Commended, the Gold Coast Art Prize People’s Choice Award, the Boy’s Choice Award at the Kings School Art Prize, the RMIT Post Graduate Award, the Necia Gilbert Memorial Award, and numerous development grants from the Australia Council for the Arts and Regional Arts Victoria.
Tony Lloyd is represented by MARS Gallery Melbourne, Hill Smith Art Advisory Adelaide and Gallery 9 Sydney.