Aleks Danko works in a range of media from installation and performance art to public commissions. The past decade has seen Danko create a body of work that suggests, discusses and interrogates the social, political and cultural landscape of Australia. Danko achieves this through the production of large-scale installations and individual artworks that combine irony, humour and sarcasm with aesthetically sophisticated and materially confident statements and gestures.
Select solo exhibitions: “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: 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.
Danko’s experience is an individual one, but at the same time ubiquitous. His particular gift and capacity is to find a truth among the many deceptions that make up our present lives and times.
Glenn Barkley and Lesley Harding, 2015