Nostalgic

About the exhibition
Featuring eleven artists from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, this group exhibition brought together recent works that responded to the notion of nostalgia with a mixture of reflection, longing and irony. As curator Zara Stanhope notes in the accompanying exhibition catalogue, ‘Although collective nostalgic representations are constructed according to hegemonic political and cultural discourses, a multiplicity of forms of nostalgia exist—opposing and coinciding with more dormant widespread representations.’

Key highlights included Sue Saxon’s the past is another country, 1996—a chest of drawers filled with paprika, eggshells and schmaltz (clarified chicken fat), evoking a sensory yearning to connect with her family’s Eastern European heritage. Tim Jones and Jon Campbell’s collaborative work No Radio, 1990, employs the schematic form of a 1950s-style automobile rendered in ripple iron as a symbol of romanticised escape, discovery and comradeship. In a more unsettling turn, Ronnie van Hout’s Manson/Son relationship, 1996, featuring press clippings about Charles Manson, exposed the darker, obsessive dimensions of nostalgia.

MUMA Online Exhibition Archive
MUMA’s online archive is expanding. We welcome your feedback and input. Please contact muma.communications@monash.edu with any information that could help enrich the archive for future audiences.

^{Image: Left: Sue Saxon, The Past Is Another Country 1996 (detail), wooden chest of drawers, flour, paprika, eggshells, earth, chicken, fat, salt, dimensions variable. Collection of Jane Vestry and Brian Sweeney
Right: Maria Griffin, Paintings 1995 (detail), colour photocopies, laminate, foam, 8 pieces (4 pieces 29.5 x 21 cm each; 4 pieces 42 x 30 cm each). Courtesy of the artist}