Oliver Watts

Oliver Watts’ paintings are rich in allusions from popular culture to the long history of painting and its various genres including portraiture, landscape, and still life. His images borrow, steal, and re-imagine visual culture. His work is contemporary in the way everything is equivalent and brought into play.

Watts often stages literature or art history tableau reenactments using actors and collaborators. The artifice of the image is also embodied by his gestural style, which is mosaic-like and languid. Permeating his work is the Australian landscape – the heat of the sun, the crunch of the dry forest, and the deafening sound of cicadas. Watts’ paintings are baroque, seductive, rich and complex.

Watts taught Contemporary Art at SCA – University of Sydney between 2011-2017. He holds an MFA in painting, and a PhD in Art History, and Jurisprudence from the University of Sydney. He has been a finalist in numerous prizes including the Archibald Prize and the Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship. His work is held in the National Museum of Australia, Artbank, and the Reserve Bank Collections. He was a founding member of ‘The Chaser’ as a cartoonist and illustrator.