Max Gimblett: Ocean Wheel celebrates the Auckland-born, New York-based artist and Zen master’s expressive use of colour and ink. And Dane Mitchell: Post hoc – which was first staged at the 2019 Venice Biennale – conjures up millions of extinct and obsolete things.
Gallery lead curator Felicity Milburn says the exhibitions reflect two very different ways of seeing and thinking about the world, connected through an interest in the intangible.
“In a time of change and upheaval, Max Gimblett’s works remind us of the expressive power of colour and form, while Dane Mitchell’s practice calls attention to all we’ve lost as a result of the modern emphasis on growth and progress,” she said.
His work also features in several major United States museum and gallery collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the National Gallery of Art.
Post Hoc reflects on the endless demand for growth and progress, revealing unrelenting loss and extinction as the present becomes the past.
It focuses on long lists of lost entities – such as failed utopias, burnt books and extinct languages – which are read by an automated voice within a chamber before being transmitted to stealth cell towers disguised as trees on the gallery forecourt, in the Botanic Gardens and at 88 Worcester St.
Both exhibitions open on Saturday, with Max Gimblett: Ocean Wheel on show until November 15 and Dane Mitchell: Post hoc closing on November 1.
Curator Peter Vangioni and former gallery director Jenny Harper will speak about Gimblett at the Gallery on Saturday, August 1, at 1pm. Dane Mitchell will give a talk about Post hoc on Sunday, August 2, at 3pm.
