Installation
Fabric, stocking, pins, beer, champagne, vodka, ceramics, found things, wood, rocks and lights
Mikala Dwyer Square Cloud Compound, 2010 Fabric, stocking, pins, beer, champagne, vodka, ceramics, found things, wood, rocks and lights Dimensions variable (Installation view) Image courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney Mikala Dwyer’s precarious constructions are both jocular and mysterious. Her installations are full of uncertainties and contradictions, their complexity destabilizing definitive interpretations of her work. While superficially exuberant, Dwyer’s work often bears dark resonances, drawing upon the inherent power of materiality and its affect upon the body. Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery presents Dwyer’s Square Cloud Compound (2010), exhibited as part of Art | Basel, Hong Kong - Encounters. Dwyer’s floppy, colourful, constructivist structure is suspended by stockings stretched to their breaking point. Prison-striped poles are adorned by lights and clunky handmade trinkets, acting at once as lampposts, totems, and gallows. Echoing the posture of capricious guards engaged in an act of stretchy torture, Dwyer’s subtle human references infuse the work with a dark anxiety. Mikala Dwyer has been exhibiting internationally since 1982. Solo exhibitions include The garden of half-life, University of Sydney Art Gallery, Sydney (2014), Goldene Bend'er, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2013), Mikala Dwyer: Panto Collapsar, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2012); Mikala Dwyer: Drawing Down the Moon, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2012); Square Cloud Compound, Hamish Morrison Galerie, Berlin (2010); Moon Garden, Aratoi Museum, Masterton NZ (2008); Black Sun Blue Moon, Hamish Morrison Galeri, Berlin (2007); Mikala Dwyer: an Australian artist’s project, City Gallery Wellington (2002); Mikala Dwyer, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2000). Group exhibitions include 19th Biennale of Sydney: You Imagine What You Desire, Cockatoo Island, Sydney (2014); The End of the 20th Century. The Best is Yet to Come. A Dialogue with the Marx Collection, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2013); Future Primitive, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne (2013); Less is More: Minimal and Post-Minimal Art in Australia, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria (2012); Plus ou moins sorcières 2/3: épreuves ritualisées, La Maison Populaire, Paris (2012); Lost and Found: An Archaeology of the Present, TarraWarra Biennial, Healesville (2008); Mystic Truths, Auckland Art Gallery (2007); Den Haag Sculptuur 20007 De Overkant/Down Under, The Hague (2007); High Tide, CAC Vilnius and Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw (2006); Face Up: Contemporary Art from Australia, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2003) and OrientATION, 4th International Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul (1995)