NO ONE IS WATCHING YOU: RONNIE VAN HOUT

12 July – 21 October 2018

This ironically titled exhibition shone a spotlight on Ronnie van Hout, a Melbourne-based New Zealand-born artist best known for his distinctive brand of existential absurdism. Bringing together works that span more than thirty years of practice, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout encompassed sculpture, video, photography, embroidery and text, and features major new installations.

Van Hout’s tragicomic oeuvre references a wide range of sources, from science fiction, cults and cinema to art history and popular and celebrity culture. He frequently draws upon childhood experiences and recollections to create wryly amusing yet heart-rending micro fictions. Casting fragile, lonely figures in the midst of perplexing scenarios, van Hout masterfully evokes familiar and yet strange interior worlds. His unsettling tableaux unleash deep social anxieties and feelings of self-consciousness, triggering the impulse to simultaneously laugh and cry.

The multitude of protagonists populating van Hout’s work includes figures from pop culture, peculiar everymen and wicked self-portraits. The latter appear to theatrically seize the artistic limelight while at the same time attempting to elude its searching glare. Van Hout’s practice deliberately blurs the boundaries between self and other, artist and audience, tragedy and farce, at once humorously and poignantly exploring powerful sensations of the contemporary human condition.

Curated by Melissa Keys.

PAST EVENTS

Visual Thinking Strategies Session

Watching Ronnie

Response Talks: No one is watching

‘Into The Void’ Film Screening

Artist floor talk: Ronnie van Hout

Melbourne Art Week, Ronnie van Hout talk

Artist floor talk: Ronnie van Hout and Russell Smith

Gallery

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, with Cold shoulder to cry on, 2010 (centre); Timing that flawed, 2009 (right),photography Christian Capurro

Ronnie van Hout, Ersatz (no one is watching you), 2003, photography Christian Capurro,

A human like sculpture sits in a room of fluorescent signs

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, photography Christian Capurro

a humanlike scuplture sits smoking a cigarette in pajamas

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, photography Christian Capurro

An exhibit of red and black chairs with a screen sits on a plinth in the middle of a gallery

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, photography Christian Capurro

Various sculptures of naked soldiers on plinths in a gallery

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, with King Vader, 2018 (background); Bad fathers, 2018 (foreground), photography Christian Capurro

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, with Failed Robot, 2007, photography Christian Capurro

Sculptures of two children on hands and knees in a gallery with a video projection in background

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, with crawling figure, 2016; Empty doorways, 2016; Handwalk, 2015,photography Christian Capurro

A lifelike human sculpture in an overcoat

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, with Punk on a bed, 2015, photography Christian Capurro

Ronnie van Hout, I should have done that ages ago (detail), 2012, photography, Christian Capurro

A lifelike human sculpture on crutches. A video projection in the background

Two lifelike human sculptures. One person is lying down. The other has a broken arm

Installation view, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne 12 July – 21 October 2018, with Dave, 2014; Sick Child, 2016, photography Christian Capurro

Exhibition Catalogue

Spanning more than three decades of Ronnie van Hout’s protean practice, No one is watching you: Ronnie van Hout brings together almost 80 artworks in the most comprehensive presentation of his work ever seen in Australia.

Contributors include Russell Smith and Melissa Keys. Foreward by Ryan Johnston.

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