Golden thread runs through new exhibition

The work of one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists has opened the 2012 season at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA).

The exhibition sees the Australian premiere of Hany Armanious: The Golden Thread, first presented in the Australian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, as well as a suite of new works and an artist’s book especially developed for MUMA.

Max Delany, director of MUMA, said the exhibition was a wonderful way to start the 2012 season at the museum.

“Hany Armanious has exhibited regularly since the early 1990s in the United States, Australia and New Zealand but this is the first opportunity in over a decade for the people of Melbourne to see a major exhibition of his work,” Mr Delany said.

“Armanious is often cited as a significant influence to a generation of contemporary artists as his work marries intriguing technical and conceptual transformations, and so it is particularly exciting for a new generation of students to experience his work here at MUMA.”

In The Golden Thread, Armanious examines the relationship between ready-made and figurative sculptural traditions, presenting cast sculptural forms that are at the same time archaic and modern, formal and informal, uncanny and solid.

Armanious’ works reveal the energy, sensation and perversity embedded within inanimate things. His interest in bringing ‘nothingness into being’, and exploring the passage between the mythical and the plain, are just some of the interesting features of his sculptures.

Presented in association with the Australia Council, Hany Armanious: The Golden Thread will be on display at Monash University Museum of Art, Caulfield campus until 7 April 2012.

For further information visit MUMA Exhibitions.

For bookings and enquiries contact muma@monash.edu or phone 03 9905 4217.