NEVER PERFECT
NEVER PERFECT
an exhibition by BENNY CHOP
3.5.25 – 25.5.25
OPENS 3pm Saturday 3 May 2025
ALL WELCOME
Benny Chop has earned his nickname over decades of chopping bicycles, motorcycles and hot rods. He is a master craftsman, mad scientist and illustrated gentleman with a heart of gold. His day job is at the Australian War Memorial, and he works through the night as well, tinkering on motorcycles in his garage, playing rock n roll in the King Hits, and helping out on his mate’s projects all around the ACT.
NEVER PERFECT is a showcase of Benny’s finest work and an exhibition featuring art by his comrades, collaborators and freaky friends. This show will be wild. Benny’s medal winning Shovelhead chopper and candy red Bonny will be accompanied with artworks and artefacts by Benny, plus paintings, prints and objects by some of the coolest cats on the eastern seaboard of Australia.
Never Perfect artists:
The Benny Chop party continues Sat 10 May with another round at the Bureau to celebrate his show followed by bands, including Benny’s, at the Fun Time Pony in Civic, down the street from the Bureau and Smiths Alternative. It’s his birthday and the King Hits will launch their no.1 King Hit Record. Find your feet and lose your mind!
Ruth Waller’s Someone Once (in Gaza and Ukraine) continues in the Bureau window this week. This work considers the relentless reports of horrific violence inflicted on the people of Gaza and Ukraine. Without the words or imagery to respond to such atrocities, she drew upon the ancient classical tradition of funerary urns that carried narrative imagery. Here they are redacted and rendered mute, intentionally left blank.
16 panels, acrylic on paper (unframed). 171 x 120 cm
$5000
Arthur Wicks, mentor and comrade of the Civic Art Bureaucrat, is showing work in two exhibitions in Sydney. THE DISPOSABLE BODY opens at Stella Downer Gallery Saturday 10 May. Exhibition runs 6 May - 7 June.
X on Styx, 1987
Gouache, ink on paper. 106.5 × 78.5 cm
Wicks’ Notes from the Solstice Voyeur is now showing in Tony Twigg’s Slot Window Gallery, 38 Botany Rd, Alexandria.
Arthur Wicks, born 1937, is an Australian contemporary artists known for his paintings, prints, sculpture and performance. The late art historian David Hansen described Wicks as a “late twentieth century alchemist … He humanises the space between us and our technology (in the recent machines), between us and the earth (as when he buried himself in a geological fault line in the San Andreas series of 1982) and between us and the heavens (by mapping the sky in his role of "Solstice Voyeur").“
Wicks is represented in state and national collections. One of his most notorious objects, the Armoured Car, was recently acquired by the Australian War Memorial. This machine was deployed in performances The Battlefield staged at ADFA in 1990, and Peace Car through Europe that same year. A major survey of Wicks’ five decades of practice will open at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, mid 2025.
This week is massive for Canberra art fans. Apart from the Never Perfect opening party at the Bureau on Saturday 3rd,
Eye to Eye: The Susan Taylor and Peter Jones Collection opens at the Drill Hall on Thursday May 1st, plus Raquel Ormella: Am I in your way? Friday 2nd at Canberra Contemporary lakeside.
Once again, thanks for reading, see you around the traps and as some of you may already know I play with Benny in the King Hits, maybe see you at a gig soon! Cheers from Adam