Aleks Danko It’s such a thin line between clever and stupid
12 February – 14 March 2009
Aleks Danko is recognised for a prolific career spanning over 30 years, working in a range of media from installation and performance art to public commissions. The past decade has seen Danko create a body of work which suggests, discusses, & interrogates the social, political & cultural landscape of Australia.
In these new works Aleks Danko continues his humorous and ironical investigation of the artist in his studio. He presents the site as a space where objects are never dormant, but evolving and redefined by both artist and audience. These unremitting layers of meaning in objects, for Danko, is sought in the relationship between them, a notion clearly at play in “NUTS AND BOLTS (TEXT) – (DRAWING)“, 2008.
Aleks Danko’s exhibition at Sutton Gallery this February is a continuation of “Humour as a Weapon“, 2008, for Optimism at the Gallery of Modern Art Queensland where Danko presented an installation of a studio simulacrum. Danko’s installation is a witty reflection on the spatial boundaries and social conventions in relation to the place of the artist in the outside world. This studio also incorporates Danko’s Song Cycle which began in 1996, continued in Volume 18 – A new valley of tears, with further criticism of the absurdities of conventions within the use of an “Australian national language.”
This exhibition at Sutton Gallery has been developed directly from his simulated studio as Danko extracts elements and reaffirms individual staged objects as artworks on the gallery wall. Danko’s works come to fruition in the form of drawings, installation, and sculpture each piece an affirmation of the artist’s presence and the evolution of his objects.