BURNING BENNO

When you walk past the Doghouse Gallery in South Terrace and glimpse inside you can’t help but take in a good looking, heavily tattoo-ed artist ensconced in a wheelchair. This is Ben – alias Burning Benno– and you know that once upon a time he’d have looked impressive riding a Harley Davidson.

Ben is a quadriplegic and this exhibition, his first solo, celebrates his 40th birthday.

Born in Tasmania, Ben moved west in July 2006 but in November of the same year had a diving accident in Mandurah and spent the next couple of years in rehab getting his fractured life together.

Thanks to family and some really good mentors and carers, Ben gradually pieced his esteem together and bought himself into a supported living unit in Hamilton Hill where he has his own two bedroom unit and there is care on 24 hour call.

When the MS society had a wheelchair equipped van for sale, Ben bought it and with the aid of carer drivers has had mobility to get out and about.

Before his accident Ben was interested in the art of tattooing and met tattoo artist Laith Kingsbury who started to use Ben as a small canvas that has extended since 2006, to illume most of Ben’s body – including eyelids – startlingly enough to probably impress famous Belgian body artist Wim Delvoye.

Ben became interested in pyrography and after technicians at Fiona Stanley hospital and Leo Bradley invented splints and safety equipment to fit his hands so that he could use wood burning tools, he was on the long path to becoming a professional artist. He was already very competent with devices that enabled him to use a touch tablet and smart phone.

During his rehabilitation Ben made a chess board and harboured the intent to one day make the chess pieces to go with it. When these are completed in Ben’s distinctive style they’ll be a collector’s item.

He started making decorative bar tops which became popular, and when he was commissioned to make advertising signs and had success in a few art and craft shows he changed his alias from Bar-Top Benno to Burning Benno!

Ben’s burning work has a definite tattoo artist style to it and ranges from heavy metal iconography to pieces with a Japanese simplicity. He extended into burning designs onto full size electric guitar shapes, coffee tables, wall clocks etc.

If you visit him at the gallery you’ll find him burning his impressive version of Escher’s Ascending and Descending Stairs.

Ben also prints black and white pictures from the internet, colours them and has them framed. These form a really immersive, quirky tableau around two walls of the gallery and are very popular.

Benno’s exhibition at the Doghouse is full of items that would appeal to just about anyone who was immersed in the Grunge subculture of the eighties.

Burning Benno
The Doghouse Gallery
253 South Terrace
South Fremantle
The exhibition closes 4 September.

* With thanks to Rob Boulden for words and images

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