From the Ground Up connecting the world 7–24 July 2021 Room sheet through Page 1

This exhibition traces one journey free speech and the right to public mistaken for the debris it is based among many possible routes through assembly and protest. upon. James Angus’s Soccerball the Collection Dropped from 35,000 Feet, 1999, and is presented in three separate The majority of the works in From enacts the force of weight of another iterations: From the Ground Up, The the Ground Up are floor-based and kind: gravity itself. Sculptural Body and In the Air. as such occupy the same spatial plane as humans. Peter Cripps’s Materials hold history and convey Connecting the World through mirrored work is a field of possible much more than formal qualities of Sculpture has been conceived as and changing perspectives that shape and colour, as is evident in the an ‘archaeological dig’ through the disrupts our ability to form a singular repurposed welded steel elements Collection that imagines the gallery or reliable view, ‘off the wall’. In Inge of Marcus Shanahan’s Echo Deco, space as housing a series of spatial King’s Threshold, 1983–84, the artist 1982, in contrast to the delicacy of strata or layers to be revealed over re-introduces the idea of the picture Slee’s tissue paper folds and the the course of the exhibition period. window or framing device, while elasticity of Louise Paramor’s paper encouraging us to see through and and cardboard Black Snake, 2000, This first iteration, From the Ground beyond it. both of which have the potential Up, includes one of the earliest for continual movement and re- sculptural works to enter the Malu Gurruwiwi’s morning star poles composition. Collection: Ron Robertson-Swann’s and Noŋgirrŋa Marawili’s hollowed architecture-inspired Byzantium, logs represent the strong connections One of a number of Low 1974, acquired the year it was made. to Country held by these artists and made by the artist, Stuart Ringolt’s Early conceptual works by Aleks its honouring in ceremony. Other Electric Arrow, 2008, brings two Danko and Tony Trembath are also vertically oriented works by Nicholas unlikely elements together in a presented, both of which came into Mangan and Louise Weaver allude to potentially dangerous transfer of the Collection some years after they the environment in a broader sense, energy, reminding us of the agency were first exhibited. to growth and adaptation as well as of sculpture and its role in connecting the impact of human intervention into us to each other and with the world. With a nod to Christo and Jeanne- these processes. Claude’s monumental Wrapped Charlotte Day, Director, MUMA Coast, 1969, Danko’s and Trembath’s The Monash University Collection is wrapped forms move audiences recognised for its support of young away from thinking about sculpture and emerging artists and practices as identifiably figurative, abstract, as is evident in Simone Slee’s Fold permanent and plinth-based. They II, 1996, acquired when she was choose more elusive forms that, quite just out of art school. The idea of literally, could be wheeled around developing an art career from the (in the case of Danko’s work) and ground up and through stages— consist of industrial materials utilised including as an ‘emerging artist’—is more commonly for other purposes playfully reflected on in Emily Floyd’s (in the case of Trembath). Important Emerging Artist, 2004, while Kathy Temin takes charge of Some decades later, Geoff Kleem presenting her own, miniaturised, revisits the idea of modular and mid-career survey in My House, moveable sculpture, adding an 2004–05. additional element of potential ‘usefulness’: the screening device The urge to memorialise through apparent in Three Minutes Ago, 1998. sculpture remains one of its key Celebrating Jan Nelson’s Defiance, 2013, is also concerns, however many artists push 60 Years reminiscent of a ubiquitous form—in against related notions of the heroic Monash University this instance, the water-filled barriers and monumental. No one more than Collection increasingly used to regulate the Matt Hinkley, whose carefully cast movement of people and traffic. It’s and crafted Untitled, 2017, in one a stand-in for wider issues around corner of the gallery could easily be Connecting the World through All works Monash University Sculpture Collection,

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Emily Floyd Noŋgirrŋa Marawili Simone Slee Born 1972, Melbourne, where she Maḏarrpa people Born 1965, Horsham, Vic.; lives and lives and works. Born c.1938, Darrpirra, NT; lives and works in Melbourne. works at Yirrkala and Wandawuy, NT. Important Emerging Artist 2004 Fold II 1996 medium density fibreboard (296 Baratjala 2018 acid-free tissue paper and cotton letters) 2 works: earth pigments on hollowed Donated by private donor 1997 edition 22/35 tree trunks Purchased 2005 Both purchased 2019 Made the year after Simone Slee completed her studies in sculpture Emily Floyd is known for her text- Larrakitj, or hollow log coffins, were at the Victorian College of the Arts, based sculptures, installations formerly used by Yolŋu people of Melbourne, in 1995, Fold II is an and prints that engage with north-east Arnhem Land to contain early expression of her interest in typography, design and language. bones. Erected as memorials to the failure and vulnerability. It tests the As a tongue-in-cheek reflection on deceased for up to a decade after question ‘How can a sculpture stand the experience of starting out as a person’s death, the poles are up?’ without fear of it doing so. The an artist, she appropriated of one no longer used in ritual mortuary work is constructed as a series of of the art world’s clichéd phrases practice but continue to be made by modules, each containing seven units for her contribution to the annual artists such as Noŋgirrŋa Marawili for of concertina-folded tissue paper Gertrude Editions program, following painting. She draws from the ‘miny’tji’ stitched together with thread. These the studio residency at Gertrude (the Yolŋu word for art, referring to are stood on end, abutting each other Contemporary she undertook from sacred designs) of their clans and so as to appear as a solid overall 2000 to 2002. Just as the residency family members. Her Baratjala works system. It is part of the intention of itself is sometimes seen as a marker are named for the area of coastline the work—and in the nature of its of success for early career Australian and a place of knowledge held by fragile material—that while on display artists, Important Emerging Artist her clan, the Maḏarrpa people. Her it may sometimes suffer fatigue and pokes fun at the hype of the art motifs refer both to the rocks and sea collapse. industry while directing attention to spray of her Country as well as to the the systems and associated language Lightning Snake Mundukul, who spits that assign value to artists and their out an electric ‘curse’ in the form works. Another of Floyd’s works, the of lightning. These larrakitj depict outdoor sculpture This Place Will yukuwa bound in yarn and feathered Always Be Open, 2012, is located flowers—a cultural tradition that opposite MUMA on the elevated relates to Yirritja moiety ceremonies. concourse. Connecting the World through All works Monash University Sculpture Collection, Melbourne

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Tony Trembath Kathy Temin Marcus Shanahan Born 1946, Sale, Vic.; lives and works Born 1968, ; lives and works Born 1947; died 2008 in Cooma, in Melbourne. in Melbourne. NSW.

Untitled—Covered Load of My House 2004–05 Echo Deco 1982 Woodtex 1977 wood, paint, Perspex, felt, synthetic welded steel canvas, rope, Woodtex and fur, polystyrene, foam core board, Purchased 1982 galvanised mild steel bubble wrap, printed matter, 2 LCD Gift of the artist 1995 screens, 2 DVDs, 2 wooden benches, While the strictest concept of 2 clusters of trees made from steel, formalism dictates that an artwork Tony Trembath’s sculpture has its wood, synthetic fur and synthetic be concerned only with its physical roots in Dada objects, perhaps in filling and sensory properties and not with particular Man Ray’s The Enigma of Donated through the Australian anything outside of itself, formalist Isidore Ducasse, 1920, in which a Government’s Cultural Gifts Program sculptors very often made use of sewing machine is obscured under by Kathy Temin, 2012 discarded industrial materials, which an army blanket tied up with string. Commissioned for the exhibition inevitably carry traces of their former Here, Trembath has not quite covered NEW05 by the Australian Centre for purpose. In calling his sculpture a stack of Woodtex panels—an Contemporary Art, 2005 Echo Deco, Marcus Shanahan is acoustic absorber and transmission explicit in the work’s relationship loss barrier made of wood fibre My House can be seen as Kathy both to the past and to design. If Art compression bound with cement. Temin’s self-curated survey exhibition Deco celebrated the machine age at Like his contemporaries making in miniature, inserted into a recreation the beginning of the early twentieth formal compositions in welded steel, of the early 1970s home she century, Shanahan was working with he is also using an industrial material, occupied at the time of its making. its detritus as the end of the century but one with damping rather than Certain rooms are given over entirely drew near. While formalist in its monumental potential. Untitled— to the artist’s projects: My Kylie character, Echo Deco has its ear to Covered Load of Woodtex also Collection, 2001, is an obsessive design currents of the 1980s, such as celebrates the aesthetics of labour, shrine to the Australian pop star that the jaunty shapes of the Milan-based with its taut canvas and neatly tied off was originally installed at the Museum Memphis Group. Indeed, the contrast ropes. of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Pet between the sculpture’s solid steel Corner, 1998, is a performance planes and the steel mesh recalls the project that was staged at MoMA typically Memphis combination of PS1, New York, for which Temin block colours against a fine pattern. recruited non-union actors to perform as a pair of mating koalas despite never having never seen a koala in person. Alongside Temin’s own miniature works are loose replicas of those by artists she admires: Howard Arkley, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenberg, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol, as well as architect Berthold Lubetkin’s modernist Penguin Pool at the London Zoo. Connecting the World through All works Monash University Sculpture Collection, Melbourne

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Malu Gurruwiwi Aleks Danko James Angus Galpu and Djapu peoples Born 1950, Adelaide; lives and works Born 1970, ; lives and works in Born 1942, Milingimbi Island, NT; in Melbourne. Berkeley, CA, United States. died 2020. The Danko 1971 Concept of Soccerball Dropped from 35,000 Banumbirr—Morning Star Poles Sculpture. SCULPTURE as Being Feet 1999 2007–08 the Elusive Object HA! 1971 plaster natural earth pigment on wood with wood, steel, engraved trafelite and Purchased 2000 bush string and feathers canvas Purchased 2009 Purchased with the assistance of In the 1990s, James Angus pursued the Visual Arts Board of the sculptural forms that created new Banumbirr—Morning Star Pole Council, 1988 versions of the physical world—art 2010 that looked, as he said, ‘like it had natural earth pigment on wood with Conceptual art came to prominence been borrowed from real life, and that bush string and feathers in the 1960s as a practice in which . . . might slip back at some point’. Purchased 2011 ideas and actions take precedence At the end of the decade, he began over the making of objects. It to work with computer-aided design Malu Gurruwiwi was a passionate originated in part in the ‘readymade’, to create hypothetical constructions, advocate for the maintenance of the designation of found objects manipulating space as though it Yolŋu culture and the custodian as artworks that Marcel Duchamp were soft and borderless. To realise of the Banumbirr (or Morning named in the 1910s. The humour Soccerball Dropped from 35,000 Star) ceremony. He created many inherent in Duchamp’s strategy has Feet, he made a three-dimensional Banumbirr poles throughout his given license to Aleks Danko to scan of a ball to obtain a digital life, altering their content to be exercise his own wry observations simulation that he could then subject appropriate for non-Indigenous on the turn towards conceptual art in to theoretical velocity and force in audiences. Of the poles’ significance, Australia. In The Danko 1971 Concept virtual space. The sculpture freezes he said: of Sculpture. SCULPTURE as Being the ball at the moment of its impact the Elusive Object HA!, he plays out with the earth after it has been The Banumbirr pole has always the disappearance of the object from dropped from the cruising altitude of been sacred and was created by art by wrapping it, labelling it and a passenger jet. the Dhuwa clans and presented putting it on a trolley—a ‘post-object’ to the family of an elder who ready for shipping elsewhere. has passed away. They were made from a wooden pole called ngaraka and painted with the four colours of ochres representing the clan’s designs. Feathers at the top of the pole represented the Morning Star, and feathered bunches tied by hand-spun bush string and native bees wax represent each of the clans and their link to the Banumbirr. Connecting the World through All works Monash University Sculpture Collection, Melbourne

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Peter Cripps Stuart Ringholt Geoff Kleem Born 1948, Melbourne, where he lives Born 1971, Perth; lives and works in Born 1953, Young, NSW; lives and and works. Melbourne. works in Sydney.

Field Theory 1996 Electric Arrow 2008 Three Minutes Ago 1998 mirrors and synthetic polymer paint arrow and electrical fitting synthetic polymer paint on wood, on wood Purchased 2009 steel and wheels Purchased 1997 Donated through the Australian For his 2008 exhibition Low Sculpture Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Peter Cripps began his career in the at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, by Rosemary Laing, 2012 1970s, a period in which minimalism Stuart Ringholt fashioned unlikely and conceptualism were challenging combinations of ordinary objects. Treating Minimalism as a point of the preceding forms of sculptural The works were effectively collages departure, Geoff Kleem’s work practice. The encounter between an in three-dimensions: drink cans with from the 1990s is characterised by object and its audience within the spray can tops, a dart with its tip seemingly industrial and utilitarian museum is at the centre of Cripps’s replaced by a paintbrush or several objects. These works relate to installations, literally so in the case configurations of arrows plugged the artist’s earlier photographs of Field Theory. As MUMA’s former into power points, such as Electric of industrial spaces, often spray- director Max Delany has noted: Arrow. Ringholt’s juxtapositions are painted so as to resemble minimal humorous but also uncomfortable. monochromes in the finished image. Periscope-like structures alter Many of his projects deliberately Three Minutes Ago is a monochrome the plane of the floor. They do provoke discomfort by transgressing painting in sculptural form, mounted not address themselves to the socially accepted norms or by on factory-made wheels. Many of plane of the walls, which is the triggering the viewer’s sense of their Kleem’s works of the time were privileged domain of painting. own vulnerability. Electric Arrow toys presented in this fashion, as he Rather, the ground on which we with one’s trust in artworks not being explained: stand is rendered problematic. physically harmful. The ground that has traditionally The addition of wheels implies lent itself to the support of a sense of utility or usefulness, sculpture. And the audience. reinforcing the notion that these works may be merely stalled as they pass either physically or conceptually between sites or states. The objects are carefully considered so they look logical, functional, banal—I like the implication of an underlying sense of logic to the pieces that they may have had or have some function. Connecting the World through All works Monash University Sculpture Collection, Melbourne

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Ron Robertson-Swann Nicholas Mangan Louise Paramor Born 1941, Sydney, where he lives Born 1979, Geelong, Vic.; lives and Born 1964, Sydney; lives and works and works. works in Melbourne. in Melbourne.

Byzantium 1974 Colony 2005 Black Snake 2000 oxidised and varnished steel axe, shovel and hammer handles; paper, cardboard and adhesive Purchased 1974 stained dowel, western red cedar, Purchased 2002 found teak forks and spoons, elk hair, Ron Robertson-Swann lived in nylon hair and jute In 2000, Louise Paramor undertook London between 1962 and 1967, Purchased 2005 an Australia Council residency where he studied sculpture under at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien Anthony Caro and Phillip King at St Nicholas Mangan has a longstanding in , where she produced a Martin’s School of Art. At the time, interest in cycles of production and number of large-scale, honeycomb St Martin’s was at the forefront of consumption, particularly in the paper sculptures that were shown the move towards abstract, formal Pacific region. Colony repurposes in a series of exhibitions titled and monochrome sculpture and several categories of tools: handles Lustgarten, including at the baroque assemblage, usually made of steel. of axes, shovels and hammers, and Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden, and the The step motif in Byzantium, which the teak forks and spoons popular Australian Centre for Contemporary appears in a number of Robertson- as mid-twentieth-century tourist Art (ACCA), Melbourne. Lustgarten Swann’s works, is both an abstract souvenirs catering to a Western refers generally to a pleasure garden intersection of planes, consistent taste for loosely amalgamated designed for public leisure and more with the concerns of formalist Pacific cultures. The former grouping specifically to a Berlin park dating sculpture, and an inevitable allusion implies destruction, extraction and back to the seventeenth century. For to architecture. The title makes it construction. The latter, consumption. these sculptures, Paramor adopted specific to classical architecture— Sourced from thrift stores and a folding technique regularly used Byzantium (now Istanbul) was opportunity shops, these items are for festive decorations and exploited an ancient Greek city—and transformed as if by social insects, its sculptural potential. Supple and acknowledges the roots of western so that the sculpture’s title evokes serpentine, Black Snake privileges sculpture in Classical antiquity. both the name given to an insect playfulness and the ornamental over community and the processes of solidity and the monumental. lopsided exchange that characterise developed nations’ consumption of resources, commodities and cultures. Connecting the World through All works Monash University Sculpture Collection, Melbourne

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Louise Weaver Matt Hinkley Jan Nelson Born 1966, Mansfield, Vic.; lives and Born 1976, Narrandera, NSW; Born 1955, Melbourne, where she works in Melbourne. lives and works in Amsterdam, the lives and works. Netherlands. Much Deeping (Column with Defiance 2013 Growth) 2011 Untitled 2017 Forton and paint Japanese twentieth-century polyurethane resin and pigment Purchased 2020 tokonoma bamboo pole, foam, Purchased 2017 fibreglass, epoxy resin, carbon fibre, Best known for her bright, wool, Lurex, metallic polyester and Matt Hinkley works at a minute scale, photorealist paintings, Jan Nelson steel making resin objects that can easily presented an exhibition in 2013 Purchased by the Faculty of Science go unnoticed. This untitled work of just three sculptures at Anna 2013 constituted his entire solo exhibition Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, titling it at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, in Strange Days after the 1967 album by Louise Weaver is well known for the 2017 and could be considered as The Doors. The sculptures combined colourful, crochet-skinned sculptures one of the artist’s major works to symbols of 1960s counterculture with of animals that she began making in date. Its components were made by the more recent paraphernalia of the the 1990s, underpinned by themes casting both natural and fabricated Occupy protests and environmental of change, adaptation, hybridity, objects that Hinkley collected on activism. Defiance is based on her artificiality and the natural world. bike rides through rural areas of the photographs of an isolated water Much Deeping (Column with Growth) Netherlands, where he lives. Untitled barrier in the Occupy Melbourne repurposes a bamboo pole that was is permeated by the tension between protesters’ camp in Melbourne’s cultivated for use in a tokonoma (a chance and intention. The casting City Square in 2011. Disconnected formal alcove traditional to Japanese process involves fidelity to the original from its neighbours in the police homes) and modified as it grew and installing the work also requires barricade and rendered ineffective, by the application of tight wires. close adherence to documentation it represented for Nelson how In Weaver’s hands, the repressed based on the chance piles of the power can only be achieved when formation of the bamboo is given objects on Hinkley’s work table. The individuals join together. Nelson cast release in the slick black growth that impression, however, is that these it in colourless polymer-modified has appeared, like an emanation from items, having been collected at gypsum, drained of its high-vis the subconscious. Its form recalls random, have since been discarded orange and retaining only its tag, the distorted dolls of the twentieth- and swept into the corner. ‘Venom’, reconstructed with street century German surrealist Hans artist Sirum 1, as its expression of Bellmer, and points to the strong defiance. influence of surrealism in Weaver’s work. Connecting the World through All works Monash University Sculpture Collection, Melbourne

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Inge King Related Programs Monash University Museum of Art Born 1915, Berlin, Germany; died Ground Floor, Building F 2016 in Melbourne. Exhibition Walkthroughs Monash University Join us on three Saturdays during Caulfield Campus Threshold 1983–84 the exhibition for informal exhibition 900 Dandenong Road painted steel walkthroughs with participating Caulfield East VIC 3145 Purchased by Caulfield Campus 1988 artists: 24 July, 21 August and 18 Australia September, 3–5pm. +61 3 9905 4217 After studying in Berlin and then [email protected] in the tumultuous wartime MAKING SPACE monash.edu/muma 1930s and 1940s, Inge King The education program MAKING emigrated to Australia in 1951, where SPACE explores creative practice Opening Hours she established her reputation as one and thinking in response to the works Tue–Fri: 10am–5pm of the key exponents of modernist on display in the three iterations of Sat: 12–5pm sculpture. In the 1970s, King began the Connecting the World through Closed Sun to receive commissions for the large- Sculpture. During the exhibition, Mon by appointment scale public artworks for which she is workshops will be led by artists Entry is always free best known. Donna Blackall, Tracey Lamb, Nabilah Nordin, Vipoo Srivilasa and Meredith We acknowledge and pay respect to Threshold is one of a number of Turnbull. the Traditional Owners and Elders— works from the 1980s that combine past, present and emerging—of the a sense of monumentality with a lands on which Monash University calligraphic element. It is dominated operates. We acknowledge Aboriginal by a framing device that, counter to connection to material and creative the expectation that a sculpture be practice on these lands for more than seen from all angles, preferences 60,000 years. the view from one side to the other through this aperture.