CASSANDRA BIRD is thrilled to announce that Robby Bennett has been selected as a finalist in the upcoming MAC Yapang Art Prize 2025 for his work "Bird sing songs and wakes the dreamers”
Robby’s paintings are rich with vibrant colour, expressive mark-making, and gestural brushstrokes that dominate the surface, blurring the boundary between figuration and abstraction. Through an intuitive, layered process, surreal environments emerge—interweaving personal experiences of reality with imaginative, fictional narratives. Recurring motifs such as native flora and fauna— cockatoos, floral arrangements—anchor the work in a specific sense of place, while simultaneously inviting dreamlike interpretation. These themes are often contrasted with and contextualised through art historical references, including both modernist and classical painting. The resulting compositions unfold as whimsical narrations of personal mythology—puzzling, layered, and loosely associative. Each painting becomes a ‘web of gestures,’ lines, and jostling colours that invite viewers to read between the marks and enter an imaginative world of visual storytelling.
"Birds Sing Songs and Wake the Dreamers" retells a celestial myth through raw, intuitive gestures and a surreal, otherworldly landscape. The painting evokes a liminal, dreamlike state where the boundaries of reality blur and personal symbolism rises to the surface. At its core, my work is about world-building and storytelling—constructing imagined realms where myths are reborn and inner narratives take shape.
Museum of Art and Culture (MAC), 2A First Street, Booragul 2284, Booragul 2284
Saturday, 18 October 2025 9:00 AM
Sunday, 07 December 2025 3:00 PM
September 24, 2025