Guy Maestri

This year’s Archibald Prize Winner

Last year’s Archibald prize-winner Guy Maestri was born in Mudgee, NSW in 1974. Maestri completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Hons) in painting at the National Art School, Darlinghurst in 2003. He has had solo exhibitions at the Tim Olsen Gallery and was a finalist in the 2007 and 2008 Dobell Drawing Prize.

His portrait of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was based on a 40 minute meeting that Guy had with his subject at Sydney Airport in December 2008, in which he stretched and soaked up the character and emotions of his subject as quickly as possible and then spent over a month in his studio developing this remarkable portrait. This work is in stark contrast to many of the works undertaken by Guy in his career, where wildlife and the environment are reoccurring subjects.

For Guy, with the concept of memory or forgetfulness appears to be an overriding theme - for example endangered species being represented a half remembered forms through the use of repetition of images that become less and less recognizable.