Nicholas Mangan

Born in: 1979
From: Geelong, Australia
Lives and works: Melbourne, Australia
Represented by: LABOR
Website: http://www.nicholasmangan.com/

UN goals

Biography

Nicholas Mangan’s practice draws its inspiration from places of tension, unwinding them and building new structures back up in an attempt to form narratives of possibilities. Mangan gathers material from specific instances of issues of culture, man vs. nature, colonialism, and political systems among others, uncovering the struggles that inevitably come with living in contemporary social structures.

Author and activist Naomi Klein similarly tackles the drastic strains put on our environment and ultimately on ourselves because of our own overconsumption in her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014). These themes are interpreted by the Australian artist, exposing and reorganizing them through various narratives.

Nicholas Mangan’s reworking of banal and casual objects, especially household ones, into man/nature-made hybrids is also reminiscent of Art Nouveau artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s architecture and designs. The organic shapes and inspirations are driven even further in the Australian artist’s work, in a return to nature using humanity’s shortcomings.

Career highlights

Solo shows

2020, LABOR, Mexico City, Mexico: Termite Economies phase 3
2017, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany: Limits to Growth
2015, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands: Art in the Age of... Energy and Raw Material
2015, The New Museum, New York City, USA: Surround Audience