Shut up and paint

Shut Up and Paint is an exhibition that celebrates and examines contemporary painting in the NGV Collection, coinciding with the major NGV exhibition David Hockney: Current, an illuminating showcase of Hockney’s work, across media, from the past decade.

Hockney is considered Britain’s greatest living painter, and his quote ‘Shut up and paint’ displays his characteristic directness, but also hints at the important ongoing role painting plays in art today. Drawn from the NGV Collection, Shut Up and Paint includes significant international painters, and a number of Australian artists, whose work can be seen to lay the recent groundwork of transformations within the discipline. Shown in dialogue with these well-known practitioners is a significant display of recently acquired works, many never before seen in Australia. A number of these recent works test the boundaries of what might be considered painting today, as artists explore a more fluid relationship between it and other forms of art making, and reconsider painting’s place in a contemporary world.

Shut Up and Paint includes work by artists such as Vernon Ah Kee (AUS), Ai Weiwei (CHN), Asgar/Gabriel (AUT), Lynda Benglis (USA), Matti Braun (DEU), John Citizen (AUS), Tony Clark (AUS), Angela de la Cruz (ESP), Juan Davila (AUS), Lucio Fontana (ITA/ARG), Apostolos Georgiou (GRC), David Hockney (UK), Maison Margiela (FRA), Joan Mitchell (USA), Elizabeth Newman (AUS), Ohno Satoshi (JPN), Mika Rottenberg (ARG), Borna Sammak (USA), Jenny Watson (AUS) and many more.