HANY ARMANIOUS: STONE SOUP

Most of the objects we live with pass unnoticed, handled without thought. A shoelace, a candle, a child’s drawing, a paint tray, even a lump of Blu-Tack.

In Stone Soup, Hany Armanious, one of Australia’s leading artists, brings these objects back into view. Through the casting process, he remakes them as near-perfect doubles so precise they unsettle what we think we know.

His sculptures remind us of the joy of seeing something as if for the very first time, while unravelling our uncertainty about how we come to know the world through its things.

Curator Laurence Sillars says: “Armanious’s practice is not merely an exploration of the object, but an invitation to dwell in the uncertainty of perception itself – a quiet but radical challenge to the assumption that the world is a stable place. Throughout, there is joy, a celebration of being, touching, of looking so intently that the familiar becomes strange. In an age of synthetic realities, this is a profoundly generative act. Like stepping into a place where the language is unfamiliar and every word must be relearned, his sculptures offer the thrill and vertigo of finding one’s bearings in a newly translated world – a place where, in order to truly see, we must first allow ourselves to be lost.”

Stone Soup is the artist’s largest exhibition to date, featuring more than 80 works spanning 15 years of practice, including a new commission and many works never before seen in Australia.

The exhibition is curated by Laurence Sillars, Head of the Henry Moore Institute, with Samantha Comte, Head Curator, and Charlotte Day, Director of Art Museums, at the University of Melbourne, and builds on a recent presentation at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, UK. 

Richly illustrated with more than 100 works and featuring a major new essay by co-curator Laurence Sillars, this publication expands on Hany Armanious’ inventive practice and serves as the definitive companion to Stone Soup.

Download the room sheet to learn more about the works in the exhibition.