• Selby Warren, Bush Poet

    February 19 – March 29, 2026

    48 Hester Street, New York
  • Dutton presents Bush Poet, self-taught artist Selby Warren’s (1887–1979) first solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper in New...
    Dutton presents Bush Poet, self-taught artist Selby Warren’s (1887–1979) first solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper in New York.
    An Australian bushman and larrikin, Warren begun working the land in his youth as a sheep shearer, horseman, stockman, bullocky, miner, fencer, rabbit trapper, and gold panner on the Abercrombie River before leading a life of manual labor.
    Taking up painting in 1965 at 76 years old, Warren explained he’d been propelled to paint all of his life, beginning to record his lived experiences with experimentation, reverence, urgency, and ingenuity — using materials like mud, sand, grass clippings, cereal boxes, glass, and mica with brushes he made with his wife’s hair, often fusing his paintings with repurposed building materials that he cut into constructions for frames.
  • Near illiterate, Warren visually chronicled his recollections and the imagined within his pictures with a magnitude of memory and feeling...
    Near illiterate, Warren visually chronicled his recollections and the imagined within his pictures with a magnitude of memory and feeling and did so with an astonishingly spare modern voice. He captured subjects from his time as an itinerant laborer and the sheer expanse of the countryside of New South Wales and the Blue Mountains, to stories of rural folklore and political figures, iconic Australian landmarks, wildlife, and made portraits of authors of iconic poems and ballads with an innately incisive, gleeful, full expression of humility and sensibility — elemental in their spirit and presence and surging forth within his distinctive abstract forms.
    Warren was discovered at the age of 85 by university professor Garth Dixon who was passing through the remote rural settlement of Trunkey Creek after a fishing trip. Dixon was having a drink at a local pub and spied the corner of a painting behind a pile of bottles. After asking about the painting, the publican told Dixon “It was done by a silly old bugger who lives halfway up the hill.” Dixon insisted upon a visit and entering the small house Selby had made himself from scratch was overwhelmed by paintings stacked and even hung on the ceiling. At once Dixon told Rudy Komon — the legendary dealer who singularly defined the modern canon of Australian art — who quickly visited the artist and arranged to have a show held at his Sydney gallery in 1972, stating that Warren was "one of Australia's greatest art finds"... "one of a half a dozen like him in the world."
  • Over a period of three years — including shows with Komon in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Warren’s paintings received a...
    Over a period of three years — including shows with Komon in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Warren’s paintings received a great deal of attention and fanfare but was soon forgotten. Komon remarked Warren was "one of Australia's greatest art finds"... "one of a half a dozen like him in the world." Bush Poet assembles significant and untouched, stashed away paintings directly from private collectors and dealers including Rudy Komon Gallery and Ray Hughes Estate which held Warren’s historical collections, revealing an unsung giant of twentieth-century painting.
    Special thanks to Roger Shelley, Josef Leibovitz, Colin Rhodes, Evan Hughes, Mick Warren, and Unita Knox
     
  • Joining the exhibition Bush Poet is a special presentation by book dealer Landslide.

    Originally from Sydney, Australia, Landslide is an independent bookshop and publisher sourcing rare and new art books, artist editions, and ephemera from around the world.

    Landslide will present a curated outpost at Dutton, New York, showcasing a selection drawn from its collection — a bookish accompaniment riffing on Australian art in the modern era.