2021 Catalogue Archive

Anthony Cudahy’s figurative paintings are born, in part, from a vast collection of images drawn from queer photo archives, film stills, snapshots of his partner, ancient sites, religious icons, and personal, family photos. Though he transforms these images in his work, their source lends the paintings an enigmatic, narrative quality, seen here in Knife & Stone (Pasolini’s Dream). In Cudahy’s work, Pier Paolo Pasolini – gay Italian film director and cultural figure – is depicted in repose with the titular threatening objects in the foreground, perhaps as a symbolic reference to Pasolini’s brutal murder in 1975. Cudahy’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at venues in the US, Europe, and Australia. In 2017 Dashwood Books released Vigil (RHYTHM) Vigil, a volume of Cudahy’s paintings alongside photographs by his husband Ian Lewandowski, which was featured in the Queering Space exhibition at Alfred University in 2018.