Revisiting the 4me4you archives takes us back to 2012 and a documented visit to Lazarides Gallery for Unsung Heroes, an exhibition by Anthony Lister.
By this point, Lister had already established himself as one of Australia’s most distinctive contemporary artists, recognised for a practice that moved fluidly between the street and the gallery, resisting any fixed position within either.
Spanning multiple decades, Lister’s practice occupies a threshold between studio-based painting and unsanctioned public expression.
His figures appear unstable and strained, registering psychological tension, social fracture, and the lived consequences of power. Rather than offering resolution, the work functions as evidence, what remains after impact.
Lister has exhibited internationally in both solo and group contexts and has been included in major public art and institutional exhibitions.
His work is held in private and institutional collections. Central to his practice is an insistence on authorship, endurance, and the right to visual expression in public space.
His work does not seek comfort or approval; it persists as a record of presence under pressure.
Resisting easy categorisation, Lister’s paintings and street interventions operate within a productive tension between refinement and abrasion, precision and chaos.
Drawing on influences that span art history, pop culture, music, cinema, and the visual language of graffiti, he creates figures that feel at once iconic and unstable, suspended between control and collapse.
