Project 16: The Agency of Things

Opening Drinks: 6pm Friday 19 February

Exhibition continues: 19 February – 26 March 2016

Held in February each year, the Project exhibition series at Anna Pappas Gallery has become a highlight in Melbourne art scene’s calendar. Project 16: The Agency of Things will bring together artists Sarah Contos, Chris Dolman, Betra Fraval, Michaela Gleave, Justin Hinder, Zoe Kirkwood, Sam Leach, Melanie Upton and Mark Whalen, under the curatorship of Kent Wilson, Assistant Curator, Town Hall Gallery.

Featuring a selection of artists working across a variety of mediums, The Agency of Things is at once a rallying cry for the life of objects and a celebration of the networked nature of our reality. Artists based in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Los Angeles are drawn together for the next instalment of the Anna Pappas Gallery Project series. All chosen for their capacity to carefully marry conceptual rigour with material acuity, the exhibition promises to provide a sweeping insight into the ideas driving Australian contemporary art.

Proponents of art have faith in the idea that the things we call art propel themselves into the world with something akin to a life of their own. That objects, materials and evidence of process have agency to affect their immediate environment and influence the world of which they are a part. The Agency of Things is an exhibition that takes this notion as its premise, an exploration into the idea that the non-human elements of the universe may well have the sort of agency we normally only attribute to the conscious choices made by humans.

For artists’ biographies, please visit http://annapappasgallery.com/exhibition/project-16-the-agency-of-things/.

Project 16: The Agency of Things is presented courtesy of Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery, Sydney; Galerie pompom, Sydney; Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and blackartprojects, Melbourne.