Hany Armanious: Artist's Project

Hany Armanious: Artist's Project

Exhibition Details

Hany Armanious had a residency at Elam School of Fine Arts earlier this year. Elam's sculpture department has a foundry, which gave the Egyptian-born Australian artist the opportunity to explore casting, one of his favourite procedures, in great depth. He made metal castings off utilitarian items of similar shape, including bells and peppergrinders. These subjects posed a problem for the process: how to deal with clappers and spindles? The resulting sculptures are part of his on-going inquiry into negative spaces and the paradoxes of describing them. In The Cult, his recent exhibition at Sydney's Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery objects were exhibited on Swedish-ish furniture borrowed from the Elam flat. The groupings recalled those old-fashioned morphological museum displays, which gathered objects according to form while hinting at some deeper significance. - 'a cult of casting'.

These arcane occult artefacts will reappear in Armanious's new installation for the New Gallery, extending the play of implausible links. The installation will take the form of an orientalist folly: a muslin 'sheik's tent' broadcasting Abba songs covered on Arabic instruments. In recasting Abba as Arabs, Armanious engages in cultural alchemy, conflating the manners of the blue-eyed Vikings and the swarthy Moors. Trying to recognise the source of the detourned music is linked to double-guessing the origins and purpose of the castings. A habitual category corrupter and cultural recaster, Armanious marries high and low, here and there. He rudely infects noble identity art and post-minimalist process art with rustic hippy-trippy values, and mismatches touristic ethnic cliches. In the age of art biennales, he presents a national pavilion like no other.

Date
Location
New Gallery, Upper Level
Cost
Free entry

Related Artworks

View Artwork

Not on display

Turns in Arabba
Turns in Arabba

Hany Armanious

Production date
2005
Medium
wax, clay, synthetic polymer, wood, peppercorns, pewter, pigment, nylon cord, string, metal dowels, speaker, portable CD player, audio
Size (h x w)
1900 x 1230 x 495 mm
Credit line
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2005
Accession no
2005/21.1-29
View Artwork

Not on display

Ladybug (Pornament)
Ladybug (Pornament)

Hany Armanious

Production date
1993
Medium
plastic bags with plastic found object
Size (h x w)
2100 x 2300 mm
Credit line
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 1994
Accession no
C1994/1/524.1-4
View Artwork

Not on display

Untitled Snake Oil
Untitled Snake Oil

Hany Armanious

Production date
2003
Medium
hotmelt, glass
Credit line
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2003
Accession no
C2003/1/45
View Artwork

Not on display

Unrealistic
Unrealistic

Hany Armanious

Production date
2007
Medium
cast polyurethane
Size (h x w)
930 x 600 mm
Credit line
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2007
Accession no
C2007/1/46