Aleks Danko

Born in Adelaide in 1950, Aleks Danko’s artistic career spans more than five decades. Working across a diverse range of media including drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, and public art, Danko combines irony, humour and sarcasm with aesthetically sophisticated and materially confident gestures to interrogate the social, political and cultural landscape of Australia.

Select solo exhibitions: A(GAP)E— mesmerized by some / thing. A reflection 2016 – 2026, McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, VIC, 2026; An Ecology of Ideas, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2026; EMPTY VOID FILLER, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2024; KLIK! KLAK! VERTI–KLAK!, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2022; “Are we done? I’d like to get back to staring at nothing” Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2019;‘Wait…I think this is where I lost my hula-hoop’ Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2017; MY FELLOW AUS-TRA-ALIENS, (a survey) Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2015-16; POINTLESS (more or less), Milani Gallery, Brisbane, 2013; DILLY-DALLY/SO-SO/SHIPPY-SHOPPY? /HO-HO/HANKY-PANKY?/BYE-BYE… shopping for and with the un-dead (YU-AH-TISH-YU-AH remix), Sutton Projects, Melbourne, 2012; Pointless, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2011; CHATTER…and more chatter upstairs, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, 2009; SOME CULTURAL MEDITATIONS 1949 – 2006 (just a little bit of ethnic folk art), Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2006; A Sing Song of Never Seven Ever/Ever, Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne, Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney, 2005.

Select group exhibitions: Art + Language, Geelong Gallery, Geelong, 2026; Conjunction, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra, 2025; The Object Lesson, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2025; Heide Modern: A Space Between, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2024; brick vase clay cup jug, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2023; New Dog Old Tricks, Ngununggula, 2023; MANIFESTO, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, School of Art, VCA, University of Melbourne, Southbank, Melbourne, 2019; Power & Imagination – Conceptual Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2018/19; BEYOND REASON – exploring the logic of the imagination, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane, 2018/19; 9 X 5 NOW, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 2017; MCA COLLECTION: TODAY TOMORROW YESTERDAY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2016-17; HOWARD ARKLEY AND FRIENDS, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2015-16; Art as Verb, Art Space, Sydney, 2015; MELBOURNE NOW, NGV, Melbourne, 2013;Reinventing the Wheel: The Readymade Century, MUMA, Melbourne, 2013; Mortality, ACCA, Melbourne, 2010; 40 Years, Kaldor Public Art Projects 1969-2009, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2009.

Artist's CV (PDF)

As a contemporary artist, Danko moves freely through the cultural ruins of his time, constructing his art from the fragmented remnants of mediums, styles and movements. He assembles useful bits and pieces, diverting them from their original functions toward other realms of play—puzzling, humorous and conceptually pointed. A conceptual bricoleur, he recycles not materials but ideas, poaching ‘found’ motifs and formats for ‘art’, mapping networks through which meaning and routes of understanding might be constructed.
Oscar Capezio, "'A rose has no teeth’ or ‘Danko humour as anti-depressant’," A(GAP)E (exhibition catalogue), McClelland Gallery, 2026.

Aleks Danko
SONGS OF AUSTRALIA VOLUME 16 – SHHH, GO BACK TO SLEEP, 2004
Installation view at Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Melbourne

Aleks Danko
SONGS OF AUSTRALIA VOLUME 4 – DANKO THE ART OF LIVING, 1998
Installation view at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Aleks Danko
Day In, Day Out, 1991
Installation view at Deutscher Brunswick Street, Melbourne

Aleks Danko
From Dialogues with a New Window Dresser – Arrangement and Decoration, 1994
Installation view at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Aleks Danko
Take the Shadow for the Substance Etc, (a performance with Jude Walton) (still), 1982
Act 3 Performance Festival
Canberra School of Art, Canberra