Antony Micallef is widely recognised as one of the finest painters in contemporary art today. His ambitious and opulent canvases examine this generation's complex relationship with consumerism and indulgence. Expressionist scenes of hedonistic excess, shop window seduction and international travel mix with spiritual iconography and lavish brush strokes. Described as "Caravaggio meets Manga", this potent cocktail has unsurprisingly seen Antony become one of the most compelling living painters. He describes his work as;
"like watching a Disney movie which slowly turns into violent pornography [...] The trouble with pop imagery is that it doesn't really go deeper than the surface, you have to drag it down and challenge it to make it interesting".
Antony was notably trained by the notoriously austere landscape painter John Virtue. While his mentor's influence can certainly be seen, especially in early monochrome works such as 'Kiss at Tower Bridge', Antony has by contrast passionately embraced colour.
The artist's oeuvre also takes in charcoal self-portraits - the lauded head series and grandiose reboots of mythological scenes. His career landmarks include coming runner-up in the BP Portrait Prize; the wildly successful solo exhibition, Impure Idols, on Hollywood Boulevard, and inclusion in AKA Peace, a group exhibition at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts curated by Jake Chapman. He has also exhibited at Tate Britain, and was included in a Banksy-curated exhibition in Bethlehem.
Focusing primarily on portraits, I feel Micallef taps into the things that we can’t see. His work narrates a metaphysical display of feelings, each brush stroke emotive in its own right. I adore his palette as it is often muted by a darker hue, but not so much that the painting is lost, his mark making has an elaborate display of gestural marks and follows an interesting format. I do rather like his perspective on a face being so warped from impasto based painting and gestural lines, taking away the physical identity of a person and yet there is a sense of vulnerability to indulgence. Though Micallef is not relevant to working with the impaired or being impaired himself, I find his work to be imminently tactile and this is something I would like to narrate in my own work.
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