Associate Professor Nicholas Mangan

Associate Professor Nicholas Mangan

Department of Fine Art

Nicholas Mangan's practice is driven by a desire to make sense of the world by unpacking the stories embedded in specific sites, objects and events. This investigation explores the unstable relationship between culture and nature, evidencing the flows of matter, energy and ideologies that are produced through the tension of these two realms. A tropical mine in a conflicted state whose local inhabitants used coconuts as fuel in their resistance, a strip-mined island-nation in bankruptcy that took refugees in return for payment from the Australian government, the island of stone money that exemplified money as a social technology, and a geological sample of the earth’s oldest crust have each lent material to this process of dissection and reconfiguration. By rerouting each of these stories, new forms and latent narratives are unearthed.

Recent solo exhibitions include Termite Economies: Phase 3, LABOR, Mexico City, Mexico, 2020; Termite Economies: Neural Nodes and Root Causes, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2020; Termite Economies, Perth Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Perth, 2019; Termite Economies: Phase 2 (Metabolic Shift), Mossman, Wellington, New Zealand, 2019; Termite Economies Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, 2018; Limits to Growth, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2017, IMA, Brisbane and MUMA, Melbourne, 2016; Other Currents, Artspace Sydney, 2015, Ancient Lights, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2015.

Recent group exhibitions include, trust & confusion, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2021; Eucalyptusdom, Powerhouse Museum, Ultimo, Australia, 2021; The Penumbral Age: Art in the Time of Planetary Change, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2020; The Posthuman City, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore, 2019; Antipodean Stories, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy, 2019; Let’s Talk About the Weather: Art and Ecology in a Time of Crisis, Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, China, 2018; Post-Nature—A Museum as an Ecosystem Taipei Biennial Taiwain, 2018; 74 million million million tons Sculpture Centre, Long Island City, New York, USA, 2018; Manipulate the World, Mordern Museet Stockholm, Sweden, 2017; 4.543 billion The Matter of Matter at CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, France, 2017-2018; 11th Gwangju Biennale: The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), Gwangju, South Korea, 2016.

Mangan was the 2020 Australia Council Visual Arts Fellow. In 2018, he was awarded the Monash University Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence by an Early Career Researcher (HASS). Mangan has been awarded numerous international residencies, including Recollets Artist Residency, Paris, in 2011 and the Australia Council's New York Green Street Residency in 2006. In 2007 he was a recipient of the Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, resulting in postgraduate studies at Universität der Künste in Berlin, Germany. Mangan is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne and LABOR, Mexico City.