Laure Prouvost meets the real with the ludicrous
French-born/Belgium-based Laure Prouvost animates her first major Australian survey with her hallmark absurdism. ‘Oui Move In You’ is showing now at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
When he packed it in working as a carpenter on the Wollongong waterfront and went to art school as a mature-age student, Dan Moynihan ended up getting a job at Bunnings Warehouse to help with finances. While he now presents his artwork nationally and internationally, and has pieces in big collections, Moynihan eschews any art-star gloss. The hardware job, though, gives an insight into his practice. With his imaginative eye for materials, being at Bunnings is like working in a gargantuan art shop: something as simple as a length of aluminium, Moynihan says, is a joy for him to behold.
Little wonder his successful career reveals a love of surfaces such as stainless-steel mirror-finished bricks (Seeing Things, 2016) or more than 2000 paint-tin labels daubed with swatches of colour (Mixed Emotions, 2019). His latest projects at Tolarno will be presented in what the artist describes as “a one-man group show”.
A mix of both old and new ideas occupy the gallery space, and compete for attention. These include a triple stack of digital clock radios that flash on-and-off with the message “WAKE UP TIME TO DIE”, anda Bladerunner reference that nods to Moynihan’s previous works riffing on the cinema experience.
Moynihan says that even in a commercial space, he has always liked to respond experimentally to a site and let it be seen in a fresh way. “I’m aiming to create an exhibition that at first glance appears as quite disparate but as the audience spends more time with the work, a cohesion presents itself.”
And as always, there are a lot of personal reference points and in-jokes—some blatantly obvious and others so subtle they appear to be there only for Moynihan’s amusement.
Recently, Moynihan had a revelation as he was stopped dead in his tracks by a lone piece of hard rubbish on the side of the road. This revelation transformed an office stationery cabinet into a portal as part of his new installation. “I tried to explain it to someone. They just didn’t get it.”
Out of Interest
Dan Moynihan
Tolarno Galleries
26 November – 17 December 2022