Nick Selenitsch’s art practice promotes the artistic and social importance of play in the formation of understanding. Through a variety of media – installation, drawing, sculpture, and public artworks – his works create an elemental language out of familiar forms where the impulse to achieve the goal of singular understanding is both continuously acknowledged and endlessly eschewed. He has achieved this by incorporating the aesthetics and motifs of games, sports and civic markings to make artworks that flirt ambiguously with the rules and procedures of their source.
Select solo exhibitions: Pool Noodle, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2024; And, &, The Middle Playground, MADA Gallery, Melbourne, 2023; Australian Crawl, Savage Garden, 2022; Nick Selenitsch: Form & The Universe of Colour, Benalla Art Gallery, Benalla, 2021; &, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2021; The Mind on Fire, Incinerator Gallery, Melbourne, 2018; Kangaroo Court, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell, 2015; Nick Selenitsch – Play, Shepparton Art Museum, Shepparton, 2014; Chalk and Clay, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; Folly, Plinth Projects, Edinburgh Gardens, Fitzroy, 2014; Relief, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2013; Felt, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2012; Structural Goals, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2011; Linemarking, Y3K Gallery, Melbourne, 2010; psychic income, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2009.
Select group exhibitions: Palermo was thinking of Monk, I was thinking of J. P. Melville in a thicket, 1301SW, Melbourne, 2023; Question the Space, Walker Street Gallery, Dandenong, 2023; It’s not you, it’s me, Fiona and Sydney Myer Gallery, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2023; Recreation, Project 8, Melbourne, 2023; Overdrawn, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 2018; Design & Play, RMIT Design Hub, Melbourne, 2016; TarraWarra Biennial: Endless Circulation, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, 2016; Merchant Cities, The Substation, Melbourne, 2014; The Gathering II: A survey exhibition of Australian sculpture, Wangaratta Art Gallery, Wangaratta, 2014; Pattern, Glen Eira City Council Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2013; Collage: The Heide Collection, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2013; New Psychedelia, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane, 2011; Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2010.
Artist's CV (PDF)...it is through his restless, energetic experiments in play that Selenitsch's art activates a state of fertile instability. To look, throw, hop, scurry, skip and limbo in Selenitsch's playground is to discover alternate ways of seeing and being in the world.
Ulanda Blair, 2014