Nina Sanadze surveys the work of Melbourne-based contemporary artist Nina Sanadze. With a practice combining installation, sculpture and found objects, Sanadze references public statues, structures and monuments as metaphors for societal transformation, sometimes incorporating physical fragments and traces of public sculpture into her work.
The exhibition presents six sculpture and installation-based works which interrogate the meaning that statues carry, and the ways they reflect the values and priorities of the time and place in which they are erected or removed.
Inspired by the public monuments in her childhood home of Tbilisi, Georgia, where Soviet icons replaced imperial statues, Sanadze’s work reveals that our cities, monuments and public artworks are constantly in flux, reflecting their contemporary moment.
The works on display reference Australia’s colonial monuments in order to explore and question the emotional resonance of public art. In the installation Monuments and movements, the artist references Melbourne-based sculptures, including the Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Edward VII (1841–1910) and King George V (1865–1936) monuments in Melbourne. Replicating these monuments as flat, folding silhouettes on wheels, this installation presents these sculptures in state of flux between being assembled or dismantled, drawing attention to ideas of permanency and the ephemeral.
Free.