Tom Benedek

Tom Benedek

Artist Biography:  My practice goes around themes like the everyday and the quotidian, domestic and family, private or public and the division between them. I am looking at these themes in the context of our hyper connected world that changes and shifts their meaning, blurring the boundaries of the categories. Painting for me is a tool I use to investigate and explore the above mentioned themes and for that I choose subject matter from my direct and indirect surroundings. I underpin questions like how painting works when everything is instantly reachable via technology, how painting as a medium can stay relevant and how it can fit in the rapidly changing forms of contemporary communication.

Following up family traditions, in 2010 I enrolled onto a Chemist course in Budapest but after spending two weeks in classes, I decided it was not for me and left. To spend my rapidly increased free time I started to go to a drawing school. One of my tutors was a painter and it turned out fairly quickly that I can easily get engaged with painting. She started mentoring me and gave me technical advice as well as materials to start with. A year later I gained admission to the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, where I studied two years of a five year MA painting course. I felt I needed a change of space and after taking a gap year I never went back, but instead I followed up on my fine art studies in London, where I graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2016.