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Translating Michelle Nikou's objects

composition
posted on 2023-05-25, 08:57 authored by Toby JuliffToby Juliff

Adelaide-based artist Michelle Nikou draws on surrealism in a reflective and productive way to transform mundane domestic objects and materials into sculptures of humour and marvel. In this exhibition of new and recent work she utilises surrealist strategies such as chance, psychological metaphor, deadpan wit and juxtaposition, and inventively mingles high and low art sources and cultural references. Her work intentionally blurs and extends the boundaries between fine art and craft and often invests unremarkable or overlooked facets of daily existence with new and unexpected significance.

Nikou’s practice is also characterised by a deep engagement with language and she forges connections between art and literature that invoke suburban life, family interactions and food. Seemingly disparate concepts and materials are regularly combined to produce unsettling and sometimes absurd effects, such as the fried eggs made in bronze that lend the exhibition its title, the flattened egg forms suggesting the vowels of the alphabet.

As a result of imaginative exploration Nikou has evolved a distinctive visual vocabulary and sophisticated practice with a strong conceptual basis in its play of poetics, aesthetics and forms.

History

Medium

Catalogue essay

ISBN

9780980297751

Department/School

School of Creative Arts and Media

Publisher

Heide Museum of Modern Art

Extent

74

Event Venue

Heide Museum of Modern Art, Benella Art Gallery, Cairns Art Gallery, Anne and Gordon Samstag Gallery of Museum of Art University of South Australia, Coloundra Art Gallery, Western Plains Cultural Centre

Date of Event (Start Date)

2016-01-01

Rights statement

Copyright 2016 NETS Victoria

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

The creative arts

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