Anthony White

Art writer Jane O'Neill says, "White takes some cues from earlier activist artists such as Yves Klein or the post-war Japanese Gutai movement. Yet the driving force behind these works is Franz Kafka's 1919 novel In the Penal Colony, a story that pre-empts the current refugee crises throughout the Pacific. White describes how the exhibition "continues my sustained enquiry into the relationship between Modernism and colonialist concepts of empire." In doing so, he asserts the role of the artist as inherently political and urges us to consider the role of artistic interventions in the current climate."

White presented his major solo exhibition Mobilising Material with The Mark Rothko Art Centre in Latvia in 2022.

The exhibition centred around personal emancipation by raising questions about surveillance, detainment and injustice in Western capitalist civilisation.

Anthony White (born 1976 in Sydney, Australia) is an Australian visual artist.

He also obtained a Diploma of Creative Studies at the School of Creative Arts, Sydney in 2002, and trained at the Marathon Program at The New York Studio School, New York in 2007, before relocating to Paris, France in 2009.

Over the past two decades of his career, White has exhibited globally, and achieved critical acclaim through international residency programmes and major art prizes.

White's work is held in major public and private collections internationally, and he has received acknowledgements in The Australia Financial Review, Art Collector Magazine Australia and Elle Décor.

Anthony White grew up in Sydney, New South Wales, and obtained his bachelor's degree in Fine Arts (B.F.A) at the National Art School, Sydney in 2005.

He received instruction under contemporary Australian-Romanian artist Aida Tomescu.

A National Art School, Sydney, graduate, White has worked and lived in Paris since 2009.

White has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Latvia, London and Hong Kong.

Landscape and architectural references are used in White's work across the disciplines of drawing, painting, collage and sculpture.

Writer Robert Maconachie wrote that, “White's artistic work revolves around the notion of reclaiming the act of dissent through the production of cultural objects.

His research is situated at the intersection of several fields in the social space including, politics, human rights, and postcolonialism.

His practice is centered around concepts of design and its history as a form of social and political expression.

He works with painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking.

Through this practice, he tackles relevant questions to our time, to encourage emancipation and new ways of thinking.”

White has been awarded a number of international commissions and residencies, which have reportedly been influential in developing his body of work, surveyed in White's solo exhibition at Le Pave D'Orsay, Paris (2014).

As well as his work being held in numerous private collections, White's portrait Mandrake - Portrait of Baz Luhrmann (charcoal on paper) was acquired in 2014 for the Australian Portrait Collection of the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Centre.

This work was also a Finalist in the Kedumba Drawing Award 2014

White received funding from the Australian Copyright Agency Ltd Career Fund in August 2015 to attend a lithographic printmaking workshop with Michael Woolworth in Paris.

This resulted in the production of a seven-colour lithograph.

White was selected to participate in the 2017 International Painting Symposium at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, Latvia, in September 2017.

Two works were acquired by the museum for the permanent collection.

Of these, White said "The works made during the symposium are a direct reaction to my lived experience in Europe, and at a more nuanced level in dialogue with the place, the reflections on Rothko himself and his use of colour as a vehicle to consider deeper aspects of humanity. Of particular interest to me is the sense one gets from his works about the inherent relationship between his use of colour and notions of human rights. What drew me to the Centre was to research how Rothko gave equal importance to both painting as a physical endeavour, as well as a philosophical enquiry."

White's work Cape Tribulation I was selected as one of the Finalists in the 2017 Paddington Art Prize.

The description of the work on the Prize website states, "This work dwells upon personal memory and history of Cape Tribulation and consequences for Indigenous Australians. Cook mentioned that 'here began all our troubles' and marks the first squeegee group based paintings executed using ripolin paints."

White's work Federation Peak was one of 42 finalists in the 2021 Glover Prize which received 640 entrants representing the, “best artworks of the Tasmanian landscape.” The Glover Prize catalogue included White's reflections:

White's 2018 work, shown in the exhibition Signs of Civilization, reflected a move to socially engaged practice.

In 2018, Elle Decor Magazine mentioned an abstract painting by Anthony White hanging in the home of Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin.

White's recent work The Landscape is never Innocent - (After Mannalargenna) (oil on linen, 150.5 cm x 121 cm) was Highly Commended in the 2018 Glover Prize for Landscape Painting.

The Curator of the Glover Prize, Megan Dick, wrote, "Anthony White's painting The Landscape is Never Innocent After Mannalargenna re-examines a contested history in early Tasmanian settlement using bold red and black gestures to reflect upon and portray the confrontations between Aboriginal Tasmanians and Early European settlers."

While the artist is quoted the background to the work as, "To me, there is a painfully clear disparity between the written history of Aboriginal Australia and actual events. Looking back at Australia from my adopted home in Europe it is clear to me that no meaningful reconciliation has taken place. As a nation Australia must adjust the record and make reparations towards its First Nations People."

In 2019, White presented a series of works at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Latvia, including artworks from a previous exhibition The Curious Eye Never Runs Dry at UK gallery Informality in the same year, including:

“Drawing from the urban cultural history of Paris, the artist uses these metro posters or “affiches” to build the image with tearing, re-cropping and utilising painterly interventions acting as a form of dissent and to dwell on modes of community and collectivity.”

In 2020, White was awarded the Creative Arts Fellowship to conduct research into the National Library of Australia's collection relating to Sidney Nolan.

The fellowship was delayed until 2022 due to international travel restrictions.

In the interim, White collaborated with Informality and the Sidney Nolan Trust to present a virtual exhibition at the Rodd, Nolan's former home in Wales.

White resumed the Creative Arts Fellowship in 2022 and investigated Nolan's Eureka Stockade mural that informed a new body of abstract paintings presented in his 2023 exhibition Manifestation with Lennox St Gallery.

White also presented work in the 2021 Luxembourg Art Fair, and exhibited in Spring1883 and The Spirit of Place at Macquarie University, both in 2023.