An art fair is not the natural habitat of political statements; a temporary assembly of galleries hawking their wares primarily to cashed-up collectors, it's a parade of beauty and taste (good, bad, indifferent) that will, generally speaking, fit in the lounge room and impress the guests.

Which gives Ben Quilty's dark, political outing at this year's Sydney Contemporary art fair more of a subversive kick. Rounding a corner to see a bad-Santa's cavern of grotesques, around a looming hi-vis Christmas tree made from refugee life vests, is a small shock.

Quilty, an Archibald Prize winner, has used his showcase at Tolarno Galleries' Sydney Contemporary outpost to take aim at "straight white men" as well as Australia's refugee policy.

The stand is hung with a row of nine large-scale impasto paintings depicting grotesque versions of a not-so-saintly Nick, lurid pink and ruddy from booze, balancing a beer can on his exposed belly; urinating into a pot plant, or laying passed out, naked, on piles of presents.

"I guess [they are] metaphors for the way straight white men are behaving — or failing to behave — in the western world at the moment," Quilty says.

Ben Quilty's work is the subject of a major survey in 2019, premiering at Art Gallery of South Australia, and touring to QAGOMA and Art Gallery of NSW. ( Supplied: AGSA/Daniel Boud )

Quilty has called this series Bottom Feeders.

"They're little fish that live on the bottom of ponds and live off other people's excrement and I guess it's a bit of a joke on that word," Quilty explains.

"Men were misbehaving 15 years ago and things have only got worse, not better, and I guess I just wanted to use a term that's gross."

Sydney Contemporary director (and sometime gallerist) Barry Keldoulis says, "Ben appreciates very much that he's fortunate to have a voice because of his reasonably high level of fame — and he's using that voice to talk about stuff that's not necessarily comfortable, but is very dear to him. And I think that endears him more to people."

Is presenting this sort of political statement at an art fair preaching to the converted? "Potentially," Keldoulis concedes. "But you actually never know what people think."

"And if, through your work, you can in any way change someone's attitude for the better, then it's not wasted."

"Also, one of the things about an art fair is that we attract a lot of attention and publicity. That's the whole point of them. The works here get photographed and videoed and written about, and the images get sent around the world, in all sorts of different contexts.

"So it's a good place for an artist who wants to make a statement — whether it's political or aesthetic or whatever."

Subverting Santa

Quilty has been questioning gender norms for some time.

A painter from Sydney's north-western suburbs who grew up in a culture of hot-rod-worshipping, risk-taking, booze-binging masculinity, he went on to study feminist theory at the age of 25 — "to understand myself and the men that I was growing up with," Quilty explains.

"When I look back on it, dad was the first father to come through after the feminist revolution. [He was] trying to find a way to bring up boys when their unnatural role in contemporary society had totally been undone."

A fascination with, and subversion of, traditional Australian ideas of masculinity has run through Quilty's practice: his paintings of Toranas and muscle cars brought poetry to something almost unimpeachably butch; his nude portraits of war veterans are tender and vulnerable, rather than classically 'heroic'.

Quilty searched for "a straight white male figure" for his series and settled on Santa. ( Supplied: Tolarno Galleries & Jan Murphy Gallery )

For his new series, Quilty says he "went on a search for a straight white male figure that I could use, in a sense, to build the armature of what I wanted to say on".

"When I talked to friends, and particularly female friends, about this idea that I had to use Santa … it's surprising how many them said 'Oh yes, I remember sitting on Santa's knee … and feeling his erection'. Some really seedy stories [came up]," Quilty recalls.

An Australian shame

The centrepiece of Quilty's Sydney Contemporary showcase fits the Yuletide theme — with a similarly dark edge: a Christmas tree made from thousands of discarded refugee life jackets.

Quilty brought the jackets back from the Greek Island of Lesbos, where they were cast off shoreside by Syrian refugees fleeing from war across the Aegean.

Disassembled, cut up and re-stitched in quilt form, the jackets are draped over a steel structure to form what the artist describes as a Christmas tree — but looks equally like the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter.

LED lights embedded in the sculpture flash out the Morse code for SOS; the work is titled Not A Creature Is Stirring.

Quilty felt compelled to bring refugee stories back to Australia. ( Supplied: Ben Quilty/Courtesy of the Tolarno Galleries & Jan Murphy Gallery )

Quilty first visited refugee camps in Syria with Booker Prize-winning writer Richard Flanagan in 2016. Since then he's followed refugees fleeing from Syria to the Greek Islands and then onto Serbia and Germany. He's also spent time with refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.

He felt the need to tell refugee stories in his art at a time when Australia has reduced its foreign aid budget. According to World Vision, Australia now spends 0.22 per cent of our gross national income, or 22 cents in every $100, on foreign aid.

"We're one of the wealthiest countries in the world — it makes me feel sick that we are that mean," Quilty says.

He hopes that by presenting work about the refugee crisis, he'll be able to "reignite compassion" — compassion that would lead to a groundswell of popular support "for a more compassionate response to a crisis like Syria".

"We have been pretty horrendous [in our treatment of refugees], I think in years to come we'll look back at this time as a very dark period in our collective history as Australians."

Quilty notes that he's been called "un-Australian" twice in his life: once at a vigil for Bali Nine prisoner-turned-painter Myuran Sukumaran at Martin Place, and again after speaking up about the Syrian refugee crisis.

"I'm proud of it. If it means standing up for simple things like caring for children in refugee camps, then I'm honoured to be un-Australian."

Ben Quilty's work is on display for Tolarno Galleries at Sydney Contemporary, from September 13-16

In 2019, the major survey exhibition Quilty shows at Art Gallery of South Australia from March 2, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art from June 29, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales from November 9.