High tide mark
2016
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
170.5 × 160.4 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
The John McCaughey Memorial Prize Trust, 2016
© Courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work
Ben Quilty’s paintings invite viewers to consider current social and political issues. The impasto-style painting High tide mark, 2016, was the result of the artist travelling that year to Greece, Serbia and Lebanon to witness firsthand the global refugee crisis. On a beach in Lesbos, Quilty observed a ‘high tide mark’ of bright orange life jackets, discarded by Syrian asylum seekers as they reached the shore after making the perilous journey across open ocean from Turkey. In Quilty’s words, the vest symbolises the ‘ocean of humans that have moved across those waters’, themselves dislocated and dispersed like the cast-off jackets.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Sydney, New South Wales
Inscription
inscribed in blue fibre-tipped pen on reverse u.c.l.: B Quilty 2016
inscribed in blue fibre-tipped pen on reverse u.c.r.: High Tide Mark
Accession Number
2016.416
Department
Contemporary Art
Subjects (general)
Costume Marines and Seascapes Utilitarian Objects
Subjects (specific)
emigration life jackets orange (colour) perils refugees suffering
Movements
Contemporary (style of art)