Nadine Christensen: Around
24 NOVEMBER 2023 – 7 APRIL 2024Embrace the friction of the everyday and celebrate the tangle of art and life.
Around is the first major survey of Melbourne-based artist Nadine Christensen, bringing together over 70 works spanning two decades of her practice, alongside ambitious new commissions. This exhibition reveals Christensen’s long engagement with the everyday, celebrating the inextricable tangle of art and life.
At the core of Christensen’s work is a deep commitment to painting, and a consideration of its complex legacy and enduring nature. Constantly re-evaluating the medium and pushing it’s spatial and perceptual limits, she experiments with the physicality of paint and the endless ways it can be applied. Christensen’s paintings chart a perpetual motion through art and life as she negotiates her immediate environment – studio, home, neighbourhood, work and back again, gathering objects and ideas.
A cyclical energy runs through Christensen’s practice – one work leads to another as she looks back to an element in an earlier painting, then re-applies, recontextualises or re-examines it from a new angle to reveal other possibilities. For Christensen, this circularity is not smooth but subject to disruptions both accidental and intentional. The work demands a capacity for both pleasure and discomfort – mirroring life itself as an accumulation of experiences, that change how one sees and feels.
Curated by Samantha Comte, Senior Curator, Art Museums, the University of Melbourne.
Free Entry
Wednesday – Sunday
11am – 5pm
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HEAR FROM THE ARTIST
“The museum is propping up the car, or is the art propping up the museum? This idea of what’s behind the paintings, what’s around the paintings – it all goes back to ‘around’.”
Watch the interview with Nadine Christensen to hear directly from the artist about the creation of this exhibition and the endless circularity of her painting practice.
Gallery
Nadine Christensen: Around
Installation view featuring Stained Glass and Hideouts,2009, The University of Melbourne Art Collection Michael Buxton Collection. Photo: Christian Capurro
Nadine Christensen, Back Chat, 2009/2023
Installation view featuring 2023 remaking as a multiple. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. Photography by Christian Capurro.
Nadine Christensen, Tangled Up, 2018; Three Piles, 2015; Retreat, 2010
Installation view. Courtesy of Therese Ryan; City of Stonnington Art Collection; Collection Gippsland Art Gallery. Photography by Christian Capurro.
Nadine Christensen, She Smoked, 2023
Featured in installation view of Nadine Christensen: Around. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. Photography by Christian Capurro.
Nadine Christensen, House and Work, 2019/2023
Installation view of 2023 reworking. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. Photography by Christian Capurro.
Nadine Christensen, Everything Is Interesting (Things That Feel Like People), 2023
Featured in installation view of Nadine Christensen: Around. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. Photography by Christian Capurro.
Nadine Christensen, Bumping into Things, 2016
Featured in installation view of Nadine Christensen: Around. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. Photography by Christian Capurro.
Exhibition Catalogue
The artist’s first monograph offers new insights into Christensen’s creative life and evolution through texts by Rosemary Forde, Jennifer Higgie and a poem by Masato Takasaka and Errol John Kidd.
Self-guided walks
Nadine Christensen’s practice is in perpetual motion around her neighbourhood: from home to studio, to work and back again, gleaning the incidental and overlooked from her immediate environment. Take these tours to explore Buxton Contemporary’s surrounds.
Explore the Melbourne Arts Precinct and discover the arts venues nearby.
Find free public art, landmarks, exhibitions and things to do in Southbank.
ACCESS
Plan your visit requirements by downloading our sensory map or artwork labels.
Download exhibition artwork labels to suit your viewing needs.
Everything you need to know before your visit to Buxton Contemporary.
Tour the exhibition from wherever you are on Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson for Vision Australia Radio.
SUPPORTERS
Nadine Christensen is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne.
Government
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Media
Image credit: Nadine Christensen, Up all night, 2023, acrylic on board, Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. Photo: Christian Capurro