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
Produced in collaboration with artist Alexis Kanatsios, John Meade will be presenting new work in a forthcoming two-person exhibition Neuro, taking place at the artist-run space Cathedral Cabinet.
An opening event for the exhibition will take place at the Nicholas Building from 6–8pm.
Neuro Cathedral Cabinet, Nicholas Building, Naarm/Melbourne 6 May – 1 June 2024
Mia Boe at the Institute of Modern Art Brisbane
Mia Boe is presenting a immersive installation entitled Was Satellite Progressive at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (IMA). Responding to the poetry of Murri activist, artist and writer Lionel Fogarty, the painting consists of six panels and is embedded within the space by a wall drawing that traces the circumference of the gallery hall. The installation has been commissioned for the inaugural Platform group show at the IMA, a new exhibition series that showcases commissioned work by emerging artists under forty, who were born, live, or lived in Queensland.
Platform Institute of Modern Art Brisbane 20 April – 16 June 2024
Laresa Kosloff in ‘The same crowd never gathers twice’ at Buxton Contemporary
A series of Laresa Kosloff’s Super 8 film works will be on show as a part of the Buxton Contemporary group exhibition, Crowd Theory. Spanning over a decade, this presentation will feature Office skate (2011), St Kilda Rd (2010), Trapeze (2009), Jogathon (2006) and Fountain (1998).
Spanning moving image, sound, sculptural intervention and performance, The same crowd never gathers twice tests the limits of the arena, highlighting artists’ practices which consider the social and structural architectures that bind these spaces, and by extension, the elastic relationship between performance and reality, audience and participant, public and private. The exhibition invites visitors to consider their presence and agency inside this space, and the potential for more active forms of engagement. Throughout the exhibition, the physical gallery is offered as a site for critical discussion and performance responses.
The same crowd never gathers twice Buxton Contemporary, Naarm/Melbourne 10 May – 13 October 2024
John Meade, Nusra Latif Qureshi and Rosslynd Piggott in ‘Hair Pieces’ at Heide Museum of Modern Art
John Meade’s sculpture Self Portrait as Mary Magdalene (2003-2009) will be featured alongside Nusra Latif Qureshi’s painting Medusa’s Respite Room (2017, on loan from the Art Gallery of Western Australia) and Rosslynd Piggott’s Unknown Woman – From China to Brixton and Elsewhere in the new group exhibition Hair Pieces.
Curated by Melissa Keys, the exhibition at Heide explores the evocative and complex significance of hair in contemporary culture through a selection of recent Australian and international works of art. The show will further examine the myriad ways in which artists utilise hair to investigate and conjure generative and even magical possibilities encompassing growth, empowerment and transformation.
Hair Pieces Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen 4 May – 6 October 2024
Nusra Latif Qureshi and Elizabeth Gower at Montsalvat
The forthcoming exhibition Local Remix: Still Life will feature significant still life works from the Nillumbik Shire Art Collection at Montsalvat Barn Gallery. Elizabeth Gower’s Cycles (2015) series from the Nillumbik Shire Art Collection will be on show, in addition to a newly commissioned installation by Nillumbik artist Nusra Latif Qureshi.
Complementing the exhibition, Nusra Latif Qureshi will present free workshops at Montsalvat, wherein children and adults will be able to produce their own still life artworks in response to the exhibition’s offerings. Qureshi was awarded the Nillumbik Local Prize for Contemporary Art in 2019.
Local Remix: Still Life Montsalvat Barn Gallery, Eltham 3 May – 23 June 2024
Matt Hinkley in ‘Always Thinking Like A Scrim’ at SHIMMER, Rotterdam
A series of new drawings by Matt Hinkley are currently on show in the group exhibition Always Thinking Like A Scrim at SHIMMER in Rotterdam, NL.
Taking it’s title from a text written by artists Etel Adnan and Lynn Marie Kirby in 2020, Always Thinking Like A Scrim explores the life cycle of textiles, considering them as a means to speak a language that crosses cultures, but also goes underneath them. Providing opportunities to talk about things that you can not say in any other medium, textiles are envisioned here as barometers of our lives.
Working on the minute scale, Hinkley’s works are made slowly and need to be met with equal attention. The drawings’ movement ripples like lace, or turns like a thermohygrograph, changing with each work. This particular series has been made with the Rotterdam port’s view in mind, given it’s visual position of primacy being seen from the exhibition space’s windows.
AlwaysThinking Like A Scrim SHIMMER, Rotterdam, NL 3 March – 26 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
Gertrude Glasshouse will present a solo exhibition by Gian Manik, You own the school, embrace your responsibility for its legacy.
Harnessing imitative techniques honed during a childhood spent voraciously copying old master paintings, Gian Manik recasts and filtrates Caravaggio’s second version of Supper at Emmaus (1606) for the exhibition. By speculating upon the futures and legacies of reproduced artworks,the exhibition demonstrates a research-led practice responding to the ontology of “institutional painting,” that has been canonised in western art history.
Manik will be in conversation with curator Amelia Winata on Saturday, 13 April at 4pm in Gertrude Glasshouse, discussing the considerations and drives behind the exhibition and its positioning when situated within the artist’s wider practice.
Gian Manik You own the school, embrace your responsibility for its legacy Gertrude Glasshouse 12 April – 11 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).
Ann Debono has curated the exhibition Gardener’s Ellipse at CAVES in Naarm/Melbourne, featuring new paintings by Debono, Annika Koops and Daichi Tagaki. The exhibition employs the gardener’s method of tracing an ellipse in the soil to demarcate and plot unformed earth as a conceptual point of departure that elucidates and characterises three painter’s practices, as that which oscillates between poles of reality and idealism, figuration and abstraction.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a zine and essay by Debono which touches on gardens, geometry, movies and painting.
Gardener’s Ellipse CAVES, Naarm/Melbourne 30 March – 20 April, 2024
Raafat Ishak in conversation at the National Museum of Australia
Raafat Ishak will feature in the panel conversation Living Egypt: Exploring Contemporary Expressions of Culture, Creativity & Identity at the National Museum of Australia in Ngambri/Canberra.
A collateral event for the ongoing exhibition Discovering Ancient Egypt, the discussion (which additionally includes actor and artist Helen Sawires and academic Dr Lucia Sorbera) will consider contemporary Egyptian cultural expressions, encompassing art, film, literature and more. The panelists will engage in and scrutinise the manifold ways in which contemporary life in Egypt and the Egyptian diaspora continues to be shaped by and has subsequently revisited the traditions of ancient civilisations.
Living Egypt (Artist talk) National Museum of Australia, Ngambri/Canberra Thursday, 4 April 2024, 18:00 – 19:30 AEDT
Please note that this event is ticketed and booking is required.
Anne Ferran in ‘Australian Female Photographers’ at the Horsham Regional Art Gallery
Anne Ferran’s seminal diptych Scenes on the Death of Nature (Scene I & II), 1986, is currently featured in a group exhibition Australian Female Photographers: From the Collection. The exhibition highlights forerunning women artists who have experimented and made decisive contributions to develop and further the rich tradition of photography in Australia throughout the past century.
Australian Female Photographers: From the Collection Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Horsham, VIC 17 February – 16 June 2024
Congratulations to Gian Manik, whose painting Self belief, insanity, literature and human culture (2023) has been selected for the Bayside Painting Prize 2024.
A celebration of contemporary Australian painting, the Bayside Painting Prize brings together a broad range of artists whose varied approaches to the painted medium conveys the breadth and diversity of painting today. The finalist exhibition at the Bayside Gallery in Brighton, VIC, will showcase the selected painting from each shortlisted artist.
Bayside Painting Prize 2024 Bayside Gallery, Brighton, VIC 3 May – 23 June 2024
Arlo Mountford’s installation Revolutions is currently on show at the vitrine space Assembly Point in Southbank, Naarm/Melbourne, in the centre of the city’s Arts Precinct.
Situated firmly within a busy public thoroughfare, this installation comprises a series of mechanical thaumatropes mounted onto wooden trestles. A nineteenth century toy, the thaumatrope presents a paper disk that spins rapidly, creating an optical illusion through which a total image emerges. In Mountford’s work Revolutions, the phrases “It’s time.” and “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!” arise through this accelerated motion, instating a familiar, verbalised text in this unfamiliarised public setting. In this regard, the phrases emerge through an absence of authorship; blurred directives in a busy section of the city which emanate out of a dark vitrine, the works circumvent further context, instead presenting as sinister affirmations that question the present, future and past.
Arlo Mountford Revolutions Assembly Point, Southbank, VIC 28 February – 31 March 2024
Metro Arts in Brisbane will present a solo exhibition of new works by Ann Debono that respond to the construction site of the Westgate Bypass Flyover, entitled Bypass Blue Abyss.
Composing the paintings from photographs taken of the site over the course of two years, this exhibition considers how Modernist values of velocity, progress, efficiency, and growth are materialised in the built environment.
On the theme of the exhibition, Debono has explained her understanding of the Westgate Bridge construction project as “as a massive, spectacular sculpture: intensely synthetic and ahuman, animated by vehicles and machinery; trains, lorries, cars, loading cranes, construction machinery and container ships.”
Ann Debono Bypass Blue Abyss Metro Arts, Meanjin/Brisbane 4 May – 1 June 2024
Rosslynd Piggott in ‘A Space Between’ at Heide Museum of Modern Art
Rosslynd Piggott painting Divided Bridge (1997) is featured in the group exhibition Heide Modern: A Space Between currently on show at the Heide Museum of Modern Art.
Heide Modern: A Space Between explores the concept of home as a site where conversations, recreation, labour, intimate relationships and closely held values and beliefs cohabitate. The exhibition centres around the profound consideration of how architecture fundamentally shapes lived experience. The original furniture from David McGlashan is displayed alongside a selection of artworks from the John and Sunday Reeds personal collection, together with the museum’s wider holdings which have continued to develop in the decades since Heide opened to the public in 1981. The show reflects on ideas of memory and domesticity, and the intersection of private and public life in the context of a former residence turned public art museum.
Heide Modern: A Space Between Heide Museum of Modern Art, Naarm/Melbourne 20 February – 14 July 2024
Vivienne Binns in ‘Staging Oneself’ at Cairns Art Gallery
Vivienne Binns’ video work Self-portrait Self-image (1980) is featured in the group exhibition ‘Staging Oneself: Photography and New Media Self-Portraits by Women Artists’ currently on show at Cairns Art Gallery.
Staging Oneself examines the creative ways in which contemporary women artists use role play, disguise, and self-portraiture to explore womanhood and female identity within the public and private spheres. Using photography and new media, these self-portraits reveal a complex interpretation and understanding of identity informed by real and imagined experiences.
Vivienne Binns’ video work Self-portrait Self-image (1980) consists of an interview and a two-channel slideshow – one depicting the life of her mother Joyce, and the other revealing events from corresponding years in the artist’s life. The artist’s work seeks to give value to hitherto ignored, and subverted aspects of women’s lives, questioning notions of self-identity, along with the colliding public and private worlds inhabited.
Staging Oneself: Photography and New Media Self-Portraits by Women Artists Cairns Art Gallery 24 February – 19 May 2024
Peter Robinson participating in the symposium ‘The in and the out of it’ at Artspace Aotearoa
On the occasion of the two-person exhibition Priorities: Charlotte Posenenske and Peter Robinson at Artspace Aotearoa, the institution will host a symposium entitled ‘The in and the out of it’ on Saturday 9th March.
The symposium aims to explore the zones of the artworld(s) by presenting a variety of positions from across the motu spanning artistic practice; collection politics; and the productions of art history. During the symposium, Peter Robinson will be in conversation with artist Ngahuia Harrison to discuss the exciting yet ambivalent process of moving work from a studio, community, or whānau context, into the public realm. They will address questions such as ‘What types of supportive protocols do artists establish to navigate this?’ and ‘What is the in and the out of the studio?’ throughout the talk, which will be followed by a Q&A.
This symposium is a Chartwell 50th Anniversary 2024 Project. Space is limited and booking is essential.
The in and the out of it (Symposium) Artspace Aotearoa Saturday, 9 March 2024 10:00 – 15:30 NZDT
Gordon Bennett, Karen Black and Kate Smith in Thresholds at Murray Art Museum Albury
Artworks by Gordon Bennett, Karen Black and Kate Smith are included in the group exhibition Thresholds currently on show at the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), NSW.
This exhibition showcases recent museum acquisitions, placing new works in dialogue with longstanding fixtures that represent the collection’s strengths. Thresholds considers to a process-led development of collecting and the variables of working with collections, contemplating where artworks can exist as portals to an ever-expanding world of unexpected sites and unanticipated tangents.
Thresholds Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), NSW 23 February – 10 June 2024
Review: Helen Hughes, “John Meade at McClelland Art Gallery”, ArtForum
Read Helen Hughes’ insightful review of John Meades’s recent exhibition It’s Personal! at McClelland Gallery in ArtForum, March 2024.
“Meade has honed his craftsmanship across an impressive range of materials and methods (including resin, fiberglass, and enamel, as well as casting and TIG welding) so as to produce taut surfaces that rebuff, or perhaps even deny, interiority. Whether deployed as a veil or as armor, Meade’s exteriors disarm the relationship between a subject and its knowability.”
Nusra Latif Qureshi at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
We are thrilled to announce that Nusra Latif Qureshi will be the subject of a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) later this year. This marks the first major solo exhibition of the artist’s work in an Australian institution, tracing Qureshi’s 30-year career.
Known for her intricately composed miniature paintings that draw simultaneously on historical and contemporary references, the artist’s experimentational practice parses out the ambivalence of tradition through a comprehensive methodology that extends to collage and photography.
The exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales will be accompanied by a comprehensive publication, featuring essays by local and international writers that explore the significance of the artist’s practice within contemporary Australian art.
Nusra Latif Qureshi Art Gallery of New South Wales 9 November 2024 – 9 February 2025
Laresa Kosloff: New Futures™ at Benalla Art Gallery
Benalla Art Gallery will present Laresa Kosloff: New Futures™, a presentation of the artist’s recent video works, Radical Acts (2020) and the titular New Futures™ (2021).
Rendered from generic, commercial stock footage, Kosloff’s work elicits acerbic criticism from dystopian, unsettling stories that invoke the mundanity of corporate-led late-capitalist societies. Often entwining darkly humorous themes with uncanny yet fathomable storylines, Kosloff manipulates and edits stock footage to constantly shift narratives, presenting alternative and speculative futures unshackled from the authorial presence of the artist. These works in turn often attend to matters of moral corruption, political apathy, tensions between socio-cultural values and representation in the public realm.
Laresa Kosloff: New Futures™ is an official exhibition of PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography, a major biennial of new photography and ideas taking place from 1–24 March in Melbourne and regional Victoria.
Laresa Kosloff: New Futures™ Benalla Art Gallery 23 February – 28 April 2024
Gordon Bennett: Thin Lines at Melbourne Art Fair
Sutton Gallery is pleased to present Gordon Bennett: Thin Lines, fourteen abstract line paintings on paper from the highly acclaimed contemporary artist Gordon Bennett.
The presentation comprises a series of paintings exhibited at Melbourne Art Fair for the first time in their history, twenty years on from their production in February 2004, and ten years on from the artist’s untimely passing.
Melbourne Art Fair Booth C2 Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre 22–25 February
