Aleks Danko: My Fellow Aus-Tra-Aliens
30 Jul - 18 Oct 2015
Aleks Danko
DILLY-DALLY / SO-SO / SHIPPY-SHOPPY? / HO-HO / HANKY-PANKY? / BYE-BYE ... shopping for and with the un-dead (YU-AH-TISH-YU-AH alien edit mix), (detail), 2015
installation view, Aleks Danko: MY FELLOW AUS-TRA-ALIENS, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2015,
drawing tableau, shopping bags, tissues, gold plaques, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
© the artist
photograph: Jessica Maurer
DILLY-DALLY / SO-SO / SHIPPY-SHOPPY? / HO-HO / HANKY-PANKY? / BYE-BYE ... shopping for and with the un-dead (YU-AH-TISH-YU-AH alien edit mix), (detail), 2015
installation view, Aleks Danko: MY FELLOW AUS-TRA-ALIENS, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2015,
drawing tableau, shopping bags, tissues, gold plaques, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
© the artist
photograph: Jessica Maurer
ALEKS DANKO: MY FELLOW AUS-TRA-ALIENS
30 July - 18 October 2015
Curators: Glenn Barkley & Lesley Harding
MY FELLOW AUS-TRA-ALIENS presented artworks spanning over five decades of the long career of Australian artist Aleks Danko, from his earliest exhibitions in the late 1960s through to his recent large-scale installations.
Born in Adelaide in 1950, the son of Ukrainian émigré parents, Danko began making art in his parents’ suburban garage. After studying at the South Australian School of Art he moved to Sydney in 1971, where he was a central figure in the city’s conceptual art movement.
The artist has consistently drawn upon his own history in his artworks. His suburban upbringing—its banality, architectural tropes and seemingly anti-intellectual ethos—in addition to his family’s dark humour have been consistent themes. Danko has also worked with a series of repetitive motifs, the most notable of which is a simple house form, as part of a strategy of re-orientating ideas from his own creative history into the present.
Although the artist is versed in a range of disciplines, for the most part his practice remains firmly grounded within the world of objects. Using language as his starting point, he transforms sound, speech, rhymes, puns and repetitions into something more concrete. Akin to poetry, these text-based pieces are short and sharp, designed to be read aloud, vocalised and performed.
In addition to many objects sourced from public collections, this major survey featured significant works remade or reconfigured by the artist specifically for the exhibition.
30 July - 18 October 2015
Curators: Glenn Barkley & Lesley Harding
MY FELLOW AUS-TRA-ALIENS presented artworks spanning over five decades of the long career of Australian artist Aleks Danko, from his earliest exhibitions in the late 1960s through to his recent large-scale installations.
Born in Adelaide in 1950, the son of Ukrainian émigré parents, Danko began making art in his parents’ suburban garage. After studying at the South Australian School of Art he moved to Sydney in 1971, where he was a central figure in the city’s conceptual art movement.
The artist has consistently drawn upon his own history in his artworks. His suburban upbringing—its banality, architectural tropes and seemingly anti-intellectual ethos—in addition to his family’s dark humour have been consistent themes. Danko has also worked with a series of repetitive motifs, the most notable of which is a simple house form, as part of a strategy of re-orientating ideas from his own creative history into the present.
Although the artist is versed in a range of disciplines, for the most part his practice remains firmly grounded within the world of objects. Using language as his starting point, he transforms sound, speech, rhymes, puns and repetitions into something more concrete. Akin to poetry, these text-based pieces are short and sharp, designed to be read aloud, vocalised and performed.
In addition to many objects sourced from public collections, this major survey featured significant works remade or reconfigured by the artist specifically for the exhibition.