Nicholas Mangan in ‘The Ecologies Project’ at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
Works from Nicholas Mangan’s celebrated Core-Coralations (2023) series are currently on view at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery as a part of the newly opened group exhibition The Ecologies Project: How climate changes culture. The Ecologies Project looks at the effects climate change has had on deep time of human culture. Considering generational conversations about climate, the exhibition postulates what seismic shifts to the stability of our climate might look and feel like, and thinks about what artists are creating now that will make it into a future cultural milieu. Featuring over 60 works spanning photography, painting, printmaking, installation, video and sound work, the exhibition includes work by Maree Clarke, Aunty Netty Shaw, Megan Cope, Sue Ford, Jill Orr, Rosemary Laing, Linda Tegg, Joseph Beuys, Jacobus Capone, Nicholas Mangan, Yandell Walton, among other artists.
The Ecologies Project 8 December 2024 – 16 March 2025 Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, VIC
Nicholas Mangan Panel Discussion and Artwork Screening at RMIT Blackbox Theatre
Join Nicholas Mangan alongside a panel of acclaimed writers, artists and historians for Artist Fieldworking: Locations, Methods and Responses, an afternoon salon at RMIT Blackbox that brings together screenings, presentations and listening sessions that engage with artist fieldwork.
Organised by RMIT, Melbourne and The Royal College of Art, London, the event celebrates the forthcoming release of the second print edition of Fieldwork for Future Ecologies: Radical Practice for Art and Art-based Research. Presenting works from some of the book’s original contributors paired with new collaborators, the salon aims to examine the subject of artist-based fieldwork as an unfolding assemblage of practices, conversations, and site-based responses to the ‘the field’ as an active (and at times difficult) site of research and production.
Artist Fieldworking: Locations, Methods and Responses RMIT Blackbox Theatre Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Please note this is a ticketed event and capacity is limited.
“The current exhibition of Nicholas Mangan’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (closing this weekend) offers, in a modest way, a series of alternatives to this historically evacuated present. It suggests that art is today a crucial site for analysing the past and future, and offers the gallery as a place where history’s various forms—its loops, eddies and arcs of progress—might be presented for our consideration” – Nick Croggon, 2024
Nicholas Mangan’s exhibition A World Undone at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in Sydney has been reviewed in this week’s Memo Review.
On the occasion of the artist’s mid-career survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Nicholas Mangan will be in conversation with Katerina Teaiwa, Professor of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University (ANU), on Saturday, 25th May.
Hosted by MCA Senior Curator Anneke Jaspers, this ‘Artist Plus One’ event unpacks environmental and historical impacts of phosphate mining in the central Pacific, drawing on Professor Teaiwa’s extensive research in the area, and Mangan’s artwork Nauru – Notes from a Cretaceous World.
Artist Plus One: Nicolas Mangan and Professor Katerina Teaiwa (talk) Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Tallawoladah, Gadigal Country Saturday 25th May, 2–3pm
Please note that this event is ticketed and has limited capacity.
An in-depth editorial feature in Art Review delves into Nicholas Mangan’s practice on the occasion of the artist’s solo survey exhibition, A World Undone, on show at the MCA, Sydney.
Featured on the cover of the May edition, Naomi Riddle’s article fleshes out the aesthetics and drives behind the ‘material storytelling’ in Nicholas Mangan’s films and sculptures.
Fiona Kelly McGregor has reviewed Nicholas Mangan’s survey exhibition A World Undone in this week’s The Saturday Paper.
Outlining the curatorial themes and aesthetic drives behind the various bodies of work featured in the exhibition–currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney–the article attends to the prescience of Mangan’s exhibition in our current times and conditions.
Fiona Kelly McGregor “Nicholas Mangan’s A World Undone at the Museum of Contemporary Art” The Saturday Paper, 4 May 2024
Nicholas Mangan in ‘underfoot’ at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery
Nicholas Mangan is participating in the group exhibition entitled underfoot, currently on show at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery as a part of the Auckland Arts Festival 2024.
The exhibition features work by artists from Aotearoa and Australia for which whenua (organic earth matter) is utilised in a range of poetic ways to quite literally give body and voice to the land. Connecting recent material enquiries by contemporary artists from the region, the exhibition emphasises a sentient, inextricable relation to earth through a spectrum of geological conditions and potentialities. underfoot draws on precolonial and speculative modes to engage a more reciprocal dialogue between us and the subterranean make-up of our home planet.
underfoot Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland 9 March – 12 May 2024
Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone | MCA Exhibition Catalogue
We are excited to announce the release of the exhibition catalogue Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone (2024).
Published to coincide with the Australian artist’s survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone showcases works created by an artist pushing sculpture to new limits. This richly illustrated publication combines artwork, archival and process imagery, and includes an extended interview with the artist, as well as new essays by key thinkers in the fields of anthropology, philosophy, political economy and art history.
256 pages, 20 x 27 cm, softcover, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia (Sydney) x Lenz Press (Milan).
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) will open the largest museum survey of Nicholas Mangan’s practice to date next year.
Organised by MCA curators Anneke Jaspers and Anna Davis, Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone charts the evolution of Mangan’s distinctive visual language over two decades, culminating with his latest project Core-Coralations (2021–ongoing), inspired by the challenges facing the Great Barrier Reef.
Exhibition highlights will include Ancient Lights (2015), a film that considers our relationship to the sun powered by solar panels installed on the MCA building; Limits to Growth (2016–ongoing), which compares Bitcoin with an ancient form of stone currency from the Pacific; and Termite Economies (2018–2021), a series of sculptures that evoke non-human labour and social organisation.
The exhibition, designed by architect Ying-Lan Dann, will be accompanied by a monograph containing newly commissioned essays. In addition, a series of public programs will take inspiration from the many disciplines and current affairs Mangan draws on in his work.
Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney/Gadigal Country 5 April – 30 June 2024
Nicholas Mangan included in ‘The Recent’ at Talbot Rice Gallery , Edinburgh
Nicholas Mangan’s video work A World Undone (2012) is included in The Recent, a group exhibition that considers a conceptual world of geological, evolutionary, human and environmental time. Exploring what art can do to stretch the human imagination, the exhibition aims to situate our actions and impact within a deeper, future-oriented timeframe. The geological ruminations that underpin the exhibition are deeply rooted in Edinburgh—a city punctuated by a dormant volcano—where eighteenth century geologists James Hutton, and later Charles Lyell (whose journals and geological specimens feature in the exhibition), developed the theory of deep time that is reflected in many of the artists’ works.
The Recent presents an experience of life on this planet that is aged and complex, where the impact of our choices resonates beyond the short-termism that calcifies our ability to take responsibility. Through the visions, provocations, research and poetics of artists, it connects the emotional anxiety of the present with the need to stretch the human imagination into a deeper timeframe, to embrace long-termism, and radically shift our perceptions and priorities.
The Recent Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh 28 October 2023 – 17 February 2024
Nicholas Mangan in Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art
Nicholas Mangan has been selected to participate in the 14th edition of the Shanghai Biennale at the Power Station of Art. Emerging in 1996 as the first international biennale of contemporary art in China, the Shanghai Biennale has become one of the most significant events and exhibitions of contemporary art in East Asia. This year’s edition, Cosmos Cinema, highlights 80 artists whose work explores the relationship between humanity and the cosmos and the extent to which this dynamic may condition the precarity of life on earth.
Cosmos Cinema Shanghai Biennale (14th Edition) 9 November 2023–31 March 2024
Nicholas Mangan, ‘Beneath the Surface’ at Heide Museum of Modern Art
Nicholas Mangan has been included in Beneath the Surface, Behind the Scenes at Heide Museum of Modern Art. This exhibition brings into dialogue a selection of significant works by contemporary Latin American and Australian artists. Exploring the ways that art can take our imaginations beyond the limitations of the known world and the veil of visual appearances.
Participating artists include: Alexander Apóstol (Venezuela), Tatiana Blass (Brazil), Lauren Brincat (Australia), Christian Capurro (Australia), Elena Damiani (Peru), Marlon de Azambuja (Brazil), Matías Duville (Argentina), Gloria Sebastián Fierro (Colombia), Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Peru), Arturo Hernández Alcázar (Mexico) Nadia Hernández (Venezuela/Australia), André Komatsu (Brazil), Liliana Porter (Argentina), Marilá Dardot, (Brazil),Jorge Magyaroff (Colombia), Hayley Millar Baker, Gunditjmara/Djabwurrung (Australia) Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza (Ecuador/France), Berna Reale (Brazil) and Steven Rendall (Australia).
Beneath the Surface, Behind the Scenes Heide Museum of Modern Art 29 July–22 October 2023
Melbourne Now will be displayed throughout all levels of The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia showcasing new works and commissions by emerging, mid-career, senior practitioners, and collectives.
*Jon Campbell is represented by Darren Knight Gallery
Nicholas Mangan features in ‘The McClelland Collection’ at McClelland Sculpture Park & Gallery from 18 March – 17 July 2023.
With the destructive impact of human civilisation in this time known as the Anthropocene, we have been forced to consider our environment as it is constituted by other forces and experienced by other organisms. To this end, artists are exploring with some urgency how the world might be conceived beyond human perception, before and after human presence.
Artist include: Andrew Browne, Amias Hanley, Sam Jinks, Nicholas Mangan, Dorothy Napangardi
Read Amelia Winata’s review of Nicholas Mangan’s exhibition Core-Coralations (Death Assemblages).
“Few artists delineate the volatile relationship between humans and their environment as directly as Nicholas Mangan. “Core-Coralations (Death Assemblages)” is part of Mangan’s ongoing exploration of capitalism, colonialism, globalisation, and the impacts that these human-made systems have on the natural environment.”
Established in 2002, the Gertrude Editions are an annual series of specially commissioned limited-edition works of art by former studio artists and exhibitors.
‘The Gertrude Editions’ includes works by Sutton artists Kate Beynon (2003), Nicholas Mangan (2007), David Rosetzky (2008) and John Mead (2010).
The Gertrude Editions
15 October 2022 – 13 March 2023
Geelong Gallery | 55 Little Malop St, Geelong
Image: John Meade, ‘Screw Babs’, 2010, hydrostone, polyethylene and steel, 55cm, ed/50. Photo credit: Andrew Curtis.
For our New Zealand friends: Nicholas Mangan is featured in the current exhibition ‘wiggling together, falling apart’ at Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland NZ. Group exhibition organised by Lucy Meyle & Victoria Wynne-Jones.
Nicholas Mangan has been commissioned to produce a new large-scale installation to be premiered at the NGV in the exhibition Melbourne Now. With the working title Core-Coralations, Mangan’s project incorporates both film and sculpture. It examines the material evidence of climate change’s effects on this vast organism, The Great Barrier Reef, and how this correlates with human activity in a warming world.
Core-Coralations is supported by the Blue Assembly program at the University of Queensland Art Museum; Ian Potter Moving Image Commission; Copyright Agency; and Australia Council.
Congratulations Nicholas on this significant achievement.
Nicholas Mangan’s ‘Termite Economies: Phase 2 #1’, 2019, is on view in Buxton Contemporary’s current exhibition ‘Still Life’, 03 June – 06 November 2022. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Curated by Jacqueline Doughty.
Nicholas Mangan finalist in the 2022 MPRG National Works on Paper
Mangan’s ‘Termite Economies (Trophallaxis V/ White-anting III)’ will be on view in the 2022 exhibition held at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery from 13 August to 27 November 2022.
‘Flow: Stories of River, Earth and Sky in the SAM Collection’ explores the narratives we weave through the places we inhabit, and the myriad ways in which nature shapes our lives and culture. Drawn from the Shepparton Art Museum Collection, the exhibition features the artwork of over 60 artists from the 1800s to now, and is on view in the recently completed Denton Corker Marshall building.
This publication assembles three phases of ‘Termite Economies’ a major series of work produced between 2018 – 2020 by artist Nicholas Mangan.
The book presents each phase in the order of the exhibition series. It includes process and research photographs, diagrams, installation and detailed imagery. It includes an essay by Artist Mariana Silva, a fictional text by writer ST.Lore, a conversation between Mangan and cultural theorist Ana Teixeira Pinto, and a republished essay by Dr. Guy Theraulaz Research Director Member of Team CAB: Collective Animal Behaviour Centre for Research on Animal Cognition, CNRS.
Language: English Pages: 152 Illustrations: Colour, b/w Format: Softcover ISBN: 978-3-943514-81-0 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Editor: Nicholas Mangan and Žiga Testen Texts: Nicholas Mangan, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Guy Theraulaz, Mariana Silva Designer: Žiga Testen
Nicholas Mangan at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
Nicholas Mangan is included in trust & confusion at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong. Curated by Xue Tan and Raimundas Malašauskas. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary, Nicholas Mangan’s Lasting Impressions is a constellation of dental casts made up of a mixture of crushed coral and other compounds. As the Great Barrier Reef transforms from one of the largest living organisms to one of the largest dying organisms on Earth due to global warming, ‘Lasting Impressions’ interrogates the literal and metaphorical relations between the human mouth, consumption, and destruction.
Nicholas Mangan at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
Nicholas Mangan’s new work Core-coralations, 2021, will be on view at ACCA from 26 June – 5 September, 2021. A Biography of Daphne is a curatorial project that revisits the Classical myth of Daphne as the starting point for an investigation of trauma and metamorphosis, symbiosis and entanglement in contemporary art. Daphne, the nymph who turned into a tree to evade the assault of the god Apollo, is a figure in, and of, crisis, but also a symbol of resistance and transformation.
Laresa Kosloff and Nicholas Mangan at Buxton Contemporary
New work by Nicholas Mangan and Laresa Kosloff is on view at Buxton Contemporary as part of This brittle light until 20 June. Curated by Melissa Keys, the exhibition comprises a series of works made during the past 12 months of pandemic disruption under the title ‘Light source commissions’.
Major works by Vivienne Binns, Nicholas Mangan acquired by Tate/MCA
We are thrilled to announce that major works by Vivienne Binns and Nicholas Mangan have been jointly acquired by Tate, London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney. The acquisitions were made possible through a corporate gift from the Qantas Foundation that has enabled both museums to expand their collections each year, bringing the work of Australian artists to new global audiences. Binns and Mangan join a group of esteemed Australian artists–among them Gordon Bennett and Helen Johnson–whose work has been acquired as part of this ambitious program.
Nicholas Mangan receives Australia Council Fellowship
Nicholas Mangan has been named as an Australia Council Fellow for Visual Arts. Worth $80,000, the Fellowship will allow Mangan to develop his current artistic research in to a major body of work.
Nicholas Mangan selected as Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2020 finalist
Congratulations to Nicholas Mangan, who has been named as a finalist in the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2020. The prize awards a Victorian sculptor for their existing body of work and takes into consideration their contribution to the practice of sculpture, their works in progress and planned work.
Prize winners will be announced at 6pm on November 11.
Nicholas Mangan at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore
Nicholas Mangan is included in The Posthuman City, a group exhibition that considers the possibilities of a conscious sharing of resources, and a respectful and mindful coexistence between humans and other species. Through its varied artistic propositions, The Posthuman City intends to open a discussion about the imbalanced relationship between an anthropocentric thinking that puts the human at the centre, and the fact that the urban environment is a habitat for many life forms.
The Posthuman City NTU CCA, Singapore 23 November, 2019 – 23 February, 2020
Nicholas Mangan at the National Centre for Photography
See the latest stages of Nicholas Mangan’s ever evolving project, Limits to Growth, in the exhibition Capital as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. Held in the former Union Bank as the space undergoes its transition to the National Centre of Photography, the exhibition explores the use of photography as a method for reflecting upon systems of value and exchange in contemporary Indigenous and settler cultures.
Capital Curated by Naomi Cass and Gareth Syvret National Centre for Photography, Ballarat 24 August – 20 October, 2019
Termite Economies is an ongoing project centred on the CSIRO’s relatively recent proposition to exploit the natural behaviour of termites to facilitate resource extraction. Ruminating on the notion of capitalism putting nature to work, Mangan has built an allegorical framework in which termites embody the dynamics of human social and economic activity.
Nicholas Mangan Termite Economies (Phase One) PICA, Perth 27 July – 6 October, 2019
