‘In 2016, while living in New York, I spent a lot of time wandering the streets by myself, taking notice of the patina on everything – on the footpaths, buildings and stoops, all the graffiti and weathered concrete. I started to build a fascination with the age and decay of things. Like these wanderings, my paintings and sculptures have a mixture of movements and marks that could almost be seen musically. I like the pieces to flow like Wassily Kandinsky and Cy Twombly but to have pockets of other things too: areas of roughness and “mistakes” coming to the foreground, but pushing my own personal abstract expressionist style.’
—artist Saxon Quinn, 2024
Raised by his Australian artist mother, Dianne Coulter, in country Victoria, and later immersed in fashion, design and tech that took him to New York City in 2016, Saxon Quinn has honed a visual vocabulary that communicates in the subliminal signs and symbols of global culture and trade. This past decade his work has shifted seamlessly between Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Hong Kong, Seoul, Madrid and Copenhagen in a series of shows that have resisted the idea of an artist being fixed by a particular time and place.
In this way, Quinn is a kindred spirit of the CoBrA artists of the 1940s and 1950s who challenged the cool conceptualism of the art world by tapping into the primal energy and colour found in the drawings of children. Their refreshing freedom and wisdom can be found in the ghostly traces of paint and graphite of Quinn’s rough-hewn canvases, and inscribed on his ceramic figures that give a cheeky wink to the marble mythology of ancient empires – MAD magazine monuments that mark our movement through the artist’s painted world.
Accumulating on the patina of both these mediums is a palimpsest of intuitive scores and scrawls that we can read and riff with at random. And released in between these different records and notes is a voice that resonates clearly and without apology, speaking volumes.
— Michael Fitzgerald, author of Late: A Novel (2023) and Senior Editor at Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Saxon Quinn’s work is held in Australian and international collections, including: tv.va.collection, Paris and Prague; the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, Madrid; and the Moxy Sydney Hotel.
Solo Exhibitions
2024: CHRISTOFFER EGLUNG, Copenhagen
2024: SAV, Los Angeles
2024: SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney
2023: SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney
2023: AT THE ABOVE, Melbourne
2022: UPRISE NYC, New York
2022: BOOM, Melbourne
2022: SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney
2021: METRO, Melbourne
2021: SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney
2020: SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney
2018: TACIT, Melbourne
Duo Exhibitions
2024: GARNA, Madrid
2020: MODERN TIMES, Melbourne
Group Exhibitions
2024: AT THE ABOVE, Melbourne
2024: CHRISTOFFER EGLUND, Copenhagen
2024: GR GALLERY, New York
2024: SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney
2024: MOOSEY ART, Norwich
2023: BEERS, London
2023: CHRISTOFFER EGLUND, Copenhagen
2023: COURT TREE COLLECTIVE, New York
2023: GARNA, Madrid
2023: SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney
2023: 4XSIX, London
2023: CHRISTOFFER EGLUND, Copenhagen
2023: IRL, New York
2023: LA BEAST, Los Angeles
2023: RHETT BARUCH, Los Angeles
2023: LIO PROJECTS, Toronto
2023: TW FINE ART, Brisbane
2023: SAV, Los Angeles
2022: SANDBERG, Odense
2022: METRO, Melbourne
2022: SIDE, Brisbane
2021: METRO, Melbourne
2020: METRO, Melbourne
2020: SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney
2019: KOSKELA, Sydney
2019: MODERN TIMES, Melbourne
2019: MODERN TIMES, Melbourne
2018: BOOM, Melbourne
2018: MODERN TIMES, Melbourne
Art Fairs
2024: UVNT, Madrid (GARNA, Madrid)
2024: ART CENTRAL Hong Kong (Ting Ting)
2024: ESTAMPA, Madrid (GARNA, Madrid)
2024: SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY, Sydney (SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney)
2024: BY INVITATION, Barcelona (GARNA, Madrid)
2023: SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY, Sydney (SAINT CLOCHE, Sydney)
2023: ART TAIPEI, Taiwan (Ting Ting)
2023: FIAF, Seoul (Ting Ting)
2022: ESTAMPA, Madrid (GRANITA)
Residencies
2024: BANDRITO RESIDENCY - Tuscany, Italy
2023: SAV GALLERY - Los Angeles, USA
Publications
2024: Instyle Mag - Australia
2024: Artlife + Style - USA
2024: Monster Children - Australia / USA
2024: Wasted Talent - Europe
2024: The Art Paper - New Zealand / Australia
2023: Sauvage Gallery - France
2023: Art Collector magazine - Australia
2023: Assembly Label - Australia
2023: Abstract Mag - Europe
2022: Les-nouveaux-riches - Paris
2021: Hunter & Folk - Australia
Collections
TV.VA Collection
Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson
Hernandez Bonnel collection
Oller Del Mas Collection
ALMAR Collection
Margenat Acquisition
Private Collection
Private Collection
Moxy Hotel