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
The inaugural Yarra Arts Fellowship has been awarded to artist Kate Beynon by the City of Yarra. This new award provides a $10,000 grant to artists working in the City of Yarra, Melbourne, in order for them to focus more intently on their practice by reducing the financial burden associated with a sustained creative practice.
With support from the fellowship, Beynon will create a body of new works that explore an interest in socially engaged space- both through her studio at Collingwood Yards and other interactive spaces in Yarra- using colour, imagination, and shared experiences.
Vivienne Binns and Elizabeth Gower at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
Works by Vivienne Binns and Elizabeth Gower are included in the landmark group exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now | Part2 at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (MPRG). On tour from the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), this exhibition follows on from the success of the first iteration that took place at the NGA in 2020.
A celebration, a commitment and a call to action, Know My Name is a gender equity initiative of the National Gallery of Australia, celebrating the work of all women artists with an aim to enhance understanding of their contribution to Australia’s cultural life.
Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now | Part 2 Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery 25 November 2023 – 18 February 2024
Through sculpture, video, and installation, John Meade draws relations between the metaphysical and surreal in the experience of contemporary life and culture. A refined and adventurous materiality defines his work, through sensuous forms and unexpected juxtapositions inflected by the erotic and uncanny.
John Meade: It’s Personal! is curated to reflect various personal threads in Meade’s work relating to alterity, including queer culture, politics, and artistic experimentation. It’s Personal! is a reflection on some of the psychological and societal drivers that have informed Meade’s life and art. The title refers to the way personal subjectivity shapes the sculptures Meade creates, and references Carol Hanisch’s seminal essay from 1970, ‘The Personal is Political’, which outlines the pragmatism of women coming together to share their personal experience as a basis for collective action.
The exhibition will feature three large new works exploring abstract form alongside key sculptures from three decades of Meade’s practice, installed across three expansive gallery spaces and outdoors at McClelland. The exhibition will coincide with Meade’s major public sculpture Love Flower (2019) being installed at McClelland as part of the Southern Way McClelland Commissions.
John Meade: It’s Personal! McClelland Gallery, Melbourne 2 December 2023 – 25 March 2024
Kate Beynon in ‘Das Kapital’, NotFair Art Foundation
The animated video work Spirits Summoning (2023), produced by Kate Beynon, Rali Beynon and Michael Pablo (aka TudoFam) is on show at the group exhibition ‘Das Kapital’. Organised by NotFair Art Foundation, the exhibition centres around the theme of value and commerce, presenting works by over 50 artists within the vaults and halls of the former union bank in Prahran. Curated by Amanda Morgan, Kieran Boland and Brie Trenerry, this exhibition of film, video art, and new media within a physical space characterised by decay and transition draws our attention to mediums affiliated with the “immaterial” in order to question the value of cultural capital.
Combining experimental watercolour and digital techniques, Spirits Summoning features a cast of supernatural characters (adapted from the KB X RB—Mask Spirits collaborative series) brought to life as unconventional protective figures appearing amidst aquatic backdrops, kaleidoscopic serpentine patterns and botanical forms. Accompanied by an atmospheric soundtrack, the work aims to create an otherworldly dreamscape to counteract troubled times.
Das Kapital 236 Chapel Street, Prahran, VIC (Former Union Bank) 30 November – 2 December 2023
Mia Boe at Ace Hotel Sydney featured in RUSSH Magazine
Mia Boe’s residency at Ace Hotel is featured in RUSSH magazine.
Taking part in the AIR (Art in Residence) programme curated by Nina Fitzgerald at the Ace Hotel, Sydney, Boe is presenting a new body of body of work entitled I can’t stop thinking about you, including a series of ink paintings on silk and a natural-fibre hanging sculpture.
I can’t stop thinking about you Ace Hotel Sydney 25 November 2023 – 13 January 2024
‘Dog Robot Space Star: A Two Cathies Collaboration’ reviewed in Artlink by Jane Trengove
The exhibition Dog Robot Space Star: A Two Cathies Collaboration at Gertrude Contemporary by Catherine Bell and Cathy Staughton, also known as ‘The Two Cathies’, has been featured in ArtLink. In a review by fellow artist Jane Trengove, the article considers the conceptual efficacy of the exhibition, remarking on how “the works of Dog Robot Space Star tackle a duality of care, within the disability space and the human interface with artificial intelligence.”
Working collaboratively since 2009, Catherine Bell and Cathy Staughton have established a unique bond shaped by a shared visual language, social media, painting, filmmaking, a love of dogs, grief, loss and empathy. The exhibition Dog Robot Space Star: A Two Cathies Collaboration was on show at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, between 21 April – 20 May 2023.
David Rosetzky in ‘Between the Details: Video Art from the ACMI Collection’ at the Manningham Art Gallery
David Rosetzky’s film Gaps (2014) is included in the group exhibition ‘Between the Details: Video Art from the ACMI Collection’ at the Manningham Art Gallery. This presentation highlights exceptional moving image artworks made by Australian artists found in the collection of the ACMI.
Gaps (2014) embodies Rosetzky’s ongoing exploration of personal identity and the relationship – or ‘gaps’ – between self and other through speech, movement and dance. Rosetzky’s collaborators on Gaps include choreographer and performer Stephanie Lake, (who also choreographed How to Feel, 2011) co-writer Anna Zagala, and performers, Jessie Oshodi, Lee Serle, Rani Pramesti and Dimitri Baveas.
Between the Details: Video Art from the ACMI Collection 21 October 2023 – 4 February 2024 Manningham Art Gallery, Doncaster
Mia Boe in ’15 Artists 2023′ at Redcliffe Art Gallery
Mia Boe’s painting Interrogation Room (2023) is included 15 Artists 2023 at Redcliffe Art Gallery, an exhibition organised by the Moreton Bay Region Council highlighting 15 Australian contemporary artists. One artist from the selected shortlist will be awarded a $20,000 prize and their exhibited work will be acquired into the Council’s Art Collection.
15 Artists 2023 Redcliffe Art Gallery, Redcliffe 25 November 2023 – 10 February 2024
Anne Ferran in ‘Photography: Real and Imagined’ at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Anne Ferran’s photographic work ‘Scenes on the Death of Nature III’ is included in the group exhibition ‘Photography: Real and Imagined’ at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Showcasing more than 200 works sourced from the NGV’s extensive photography collection, the exhibition interrogates the proposition that photographs are either grounded in reality – a record, a document, a reflection of the world – or the product of imagination, storytelling and illusion.
Remarking on the acclaimed series ‘Scenes on the Death of Nature’ in 1987, Anne Ferran has said, “In their size and scale, their period connotations, their employment of classical conventions, the photographs are reminiscent of monumental sculpture which is, out of all art forms, the most public. It could be said of these photographs that the language they “speak” is so much a part of our culture that the audience already knows how to interpret them, even if it doesn’t “know” that it knows.”
Photography: Real and Imagined The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia 13 October 2023 – 28 January 2024
Nick Selenitsch in ‘Question The Space’, Walker Street Gallery
Works from the series ‘&’ and ‘More Rebounds’ by Nick Selenitsch are included in the group exhibition Question the Space at the Walker Street Gallery in the City of Dandenong. Curated by Esther Gyorki, the exhibition confronts a conception of galleries as uncomfortable, rigid spaces in which movement is strictly regulated and accessibility is limited. The exhibition circumvents traditional modes of display, presenting artworks in unconventional and rarely attended to spaces within art galleries, while centring artists who’s work invokes playfulness and participation, each of which are fundamental tenets in Selenitsch’s practice.
Question the Space Walker Street Gallery, City of Dandenong 21 November 2023 – 1 March 2024
Catherine Bell and Cathy Staughton’s collaborative film ‘Dog Robot Space Star’ 2023 is included in this years Mona Foma festival, organised by MONA, Hobart, Tasmania.
Catherine Bell and Cathy Staughton, aka The Two Cathies, have worked together on projects since The Portrait Exchange (2009), their first collaborative venture for Arts Project Australia. The creative partnership’s current project involves working exclusively with the infamous Boston Dynamics Robot ‘Spot’ during a six-month residency at RMIT Health Transformation Lab.
Dog Robot Space Star fuses art, film and technology. Bell’s Dadaist-inspired film explores the impact of COVID lockdowns on the creative psyche and the effect of prolonged, enforced, social isolation on marginalised and vulnerable communities. Staughton’s series of two-dimensional artworks investigate the artist’s passion for technology, and empathic relationship with ‘Spot’ the Boston Dynamics Robot. Situated together, the exhibition raises ethical questions about our duty of care to the technology that companions and serves us. Do we owe a debt of gratitude to the technological devices we bond with over extended periods of time? How should we respond when the technology we rely on malfunctions, becomes old and outdated, ceases and desists?
Nick Selenitsch’s wall drawing ‘Maze’ (2023) is included in the group exhibition Palermo was thinking of Monk, I was thinking of J. P. Melville in a thicket, currently on show at 1301SW until 16 December.
Featuring abstract works by Janet Burchill, Don Driver, Hilarie Mais, Robert Moreland and Nick Selenitsch, this exhibition takes its impetus from ideas surrounding “jazz” and “folk” and how they sit alongside (on… in…) materiality, construction and concept, and colour the complexity of abstraction.
Palermo was thinking of Monk, I was thinking of J. P. Melville in a thicket 1301SW, Melbourne 11 Nov – 16 Dec 2023
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
“I miss a lot of people and places. I get very sentimental and nostalgic. These works represent that feeling, that ever-present feeling you have when you are away from home or from those you love.” —Mia Boe
During a month-long residency at Ace Hotel Sydney, Mia Boe created a series of ink paintings on silk and a natural fibre hanging sculpture exploring that ever-present feeling of acknowledging lost loved ones and ancestors around you. Depicting spirit people in landscapes and domestic space, Boe’s work is influenced by her Butchulla and Burmese ancestry, folklore and the inheritance and “disinheritance” of these two cultures.
Mia Boe I can’t stop thinking about you Ace Hotel, Sydney 25 November 2023 – 13 January 2024
Gian Manik and Mia Boe included in Gertrude Studios 2023, Gertrude Contemporary
The annual Gertrude Studios exhibition presents new and recent works produced in the organisation’s 16 studios, celebrating the site as a conduit for dialogue and making. A collective snapshot of the practices supported within the program, the exhibition offers the opportunity to experience a broad diversity of works from leading arts practitioners in Naarm/Melbourne, as well as examine material and conceptual developments in contemporary practice.
The exhibition features work from each of Gertrude’s sixteen Studio Artists, including Mia Boe and Gian Manik, remaining a cornerstone of the annual Gertrude programme that is conceived throughout the year by the Gertrude Studio Artists and the Curator in Residence Amelia Winata. The Studio Artists experiment with divergent ideas or reflect on recent productions in new configurations, all in conversation with the work of fellow practitioners.
Gertrude Studios 2023 Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne 11 November – 17 December 2023
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
Laresa Kosloff and Rosslynd Piggott in ‘nightshifts’ at Buxton Contemporary
Works by Laresa Kosloff and Rosslynd Piggott feature in the group exhibition nightshifts at Buxton Contemporary. Highlighting artists whose practice attends to solitude and isolation through manifold permutations, nightshifts gathers works which span a range of histories, narratives and media.
Presenting work from the Michael Buxton and the University of Melbourne Collections alongside recent commissions, the exhibition carefully ruminates the importance of solitude as a condition of divergence for contemporary artists who are working at a time of emphasised collaborative practice.
nightshifts Buxton Contemporary 26 May–29 October 2023
Nusra Latif Qureshi, ‘Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now’, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK
Nusra Latif Qureshi’s digital photomontage DID YOU COME HERE TO FIND HISTORY? is included in the group exhibition Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, UK. This monumental show explores how the traditions of South Asian miniature painting have been reclaimed and reinvented by modern and contemporary artists, taken forward beyond the pages of illuminated manuscripts to experimental forms that include installations, sculpture, and film.
Featuring work by artists from different generations working in dialogue with the miniature tradition, the exhibition presents contemporary works alongside examples of miniature painting dating as far back as the mid-16th century, many of which have been drawn from major collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum. This landmark exhibition showcases South Asian miniature painting to spark novel and meaningful connections across epochs through a rich array of multidisciplinary works.
Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now MK Gallery 7 October 2023–28 January 2024
Gordon Bennett, ‘From the Collection: Gordon Bennett’ at the Museum of Brisbane
The Museum of Brisbane is currently presenting a selection of works by Gordon Bennet from their collection of the late artist. Highlighting two recent acquisitions by the museum, this intimate presentation features paintings from the artist’s iconic interior series alongside striking works on paper.
From The Collection: Gordon Bennett Museum of Brisbane 5 August 2023–21 January 2024
Read Helen Hughes insightful review of Stephen Bush’s most recent exhibition A Troubled Mind in ARTFORUM.
“‘A Troubled Mind’ was an evocative title for Stephen Bush’s most recent exhibition. Characteristic of the artist’s practice, which spans almost five decades now, certain tropes reappeared across many of the paintings like demons that could not be exorcised. A preening cockerel, a goat looking back at the viewer over its left shoulder, a potbellied man pissing on the street, another man with several pipes dangling ostentatiously from his mouth—these forms echoed across this body of work produced, for the most part, over the past three years. Some of the motifs—for instance, the farm animals—have been haunting Bush’s practice for far longer, reflecting the artist’s childhood on a farm in rural Victoria.”
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
Review: Vanessa Francesca, ‘Gian Manik, ‘Don Quixote”, Art Guide Australia
September 2023
Read Vanessa Francesca’s current review of Gian Manik’s exhibition Don Quixote.
“Gian Manik is one of Australia’s most exciting contemporary artists. His exhibition Don Quixote is a palimpsest that pays tribute to the many layers of identity, interpretation and innovation that have characterised the history of the work.”
Don Quixote continues at Sutton Gallery until the 30 September, 2023.
Laresa Kosloff’s film trilogy La Perruque (2019), Radical Acts (2020) and New Futures™ (2021) is currently on view at Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. These fables explicitly tell tales of resistance, while implicitly questioning representation in the public realm.
In La Perruque (2019), an errant office worker writes a novel while at work, imagining his co-workers to be characters in his fantastical narrative. In Radical Acts (2020), climate scientists clandestinely distribute a pathogen that renders corporate workers less productive and more susceptible to non-profit motivations. In New Futures™ (2021), a war is waged between industrious, hyper-charismatic ‘synthetic’ personalities tailored for commercial success and disgruntled hackers nostalgic for an apathetic past.
Capital Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane 09 September–16 December 2023
