Image credit: James Prinz
Sydney, Australia: Carriageworks today announced its most ambitious project to date, a major exhibition of work by
acclaimed American artist Nick Cave, opening in 2018 and presented free to the public over a six-month period. The
exhibition, titled UNTIL, is the result of a new partnership between Carriageworks, the Massachusetts Museum of
Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, with the three organisations cocommissioning co-presenting the project following four year’s development by the artist.
One of the most important artists of his generation, Nick Cave (b.1959) is best known for his ‘soundsuits’ - intricate sculptures
that combine art, fashion, dance and music. Cave will present these sound-suits for the first time in Australia as part of the
HEARD·SYD performances at Carriageworks and in Pitt Street Mall on 10 and 12 November.
UNTIL represents Carriageworks’ most significant contemporary arts presentation ever, spread over 5,000 square metres at
the Sydney-based multi-arts institution. Also marking the artist’s largest project of his career, Cave has created a large-scale
installation for UNTIL, comprised of thousands of found objects and millions of beads, giving visitors the feeling that they have
stepped inside one of Cave’s iconic sound-suits. The exhibition speaks to the artist’s belief that art invigorates cities, with other
highlights including an immersive video installation with rippling water and lifeguard chairs, and Flow Blow, a space in which
visitors find themselves awash in a waterfall of wind-blown mylar filaments.
The UNTIL exhibition at Carriageworks will also be used as a performance space throughout the six-month duration, including
free events spanning music, theatre and performance, alongside panel discussions and community forums. This program of
events will be specially-curated by Carriageworks for the project’s Sydney presentation, based on the engagement of multidisciplinary artists from the fields of fashion, film, dance, visual arts, theatre and literature, who will be asked to respond to the
exhibition.
Nick Cave, who believes in humanity and sees his work relating to empowering people, commented on UNTIL: “I view this work
as a theatre set, or an elaborate community forum, as much as a work of sculpture.”
Cave’s UNTIL installation takes viewers on a journey, with visitors entering the exhibition on a mirrored floor beneath a dense
sculptural field of spinning lawn ornaments leading up into a cloud suspended from the ceiling that is populated with birds,
flowers and black-face lawn jockeys. The journey culminates with a mountainous structure constructed with millions of plastic
pony beads. The artist has created a space where kinetics and sumptuous materials are interrupted with stark images of guns,
bullets and targets, that position us all as culpable, vulnerable and potentially under attack.
Carriageworks Director Lisa Havilah said: “Carriageworks is honoured to be working with Nick Cave and our international
partner institutions to deliver this ambitious project. Carriageworks is a place that engages communities with contemporary
ideas and issues through commissioning and presenting work across dance, visual arts, music and performance. Nick Cave is an
artist that is undefinable in the way that he can easily move between these forms, while also creating a work that has a great
generosity to other artists and to our communities. Until will provide an opportunity to see ourselves reflected which will be a
great gift from Nick Cave to all of us. We look forward to being together inside the brilliantly large and sparkly world that is
Nick Cave.”
Nick Cave UNTIL will be presented free to the public, supported by a six-month public program, in 2018.
Ends
MEDIA CONTACTS: To request interviews or press imagery in relation to the project, please contact Kym Elphinstone,
Articulate, [email protected], 0421 106 139 or Jasmine Hersee, [email protected], 0406 649 393.
NICK CAVE BIOGRAPHY:
Nick Cave is an artist, educator and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide
range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. He says of himself "I have found my middle
and now am working toward what I am leaving behind." Cave is well known for his soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the
scale of his body. Soundsuits camouflage the body, masking and creating a second skin that conceals race, gender, and class,
forcing the viewer to look without judgment.
A solo exhibition of Cave’s work is currently on view at the Cranbrook Art Museum (2015), in Michigan, US. He will have a solo
exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the St.
Louis Art Museum (2014-2015), the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (2014) and the Denver Art Museum (2013).
Public collections include the Brooklyn Museum (New York); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Arkansas); the Detroit
Institute of Arts (Michigan); the High Museum of Art (Georgia); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington,
D.C.); the Norton Museum of Art (Florida); the Museum of Modern Art (New York); the Birmingham Museum of Art (Alabama) ;
the De Young Museum (California); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (New York); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas);
the Orlando Museum of Art (Florida); the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.); and the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art (California), among others.
Cave has received several prestigious awards including: the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2008), Artadia Award (2006), the
Joyce Award (2006), Creative Capital Grants (2002, 2004 and 2005), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2001).
Cave, who received his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, is Professor and Chairman of the Fashion Department at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Nick Cave has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2006 when he had a
show entitled Soundsuits. Other solo exhibitions at the gallery include Recent Soundsuits (2009), Ever-After (2011) and a twopart exhibition Made by Whites for Whites and Rescue (2014).
ABOUT CARRIAGEWORKS: Carriageworks presents a contemporary multi-arts program that engages artists and audiences with
contemporary ideas and issues. The program is artist led and emerges from Carriageworks’ commitment to reflecting social
and cultural diversity. The Carriageworks artistic program is ambitious, risk taking and unrelenting in its support of artists.
Carriageworks is a cultural facility of the NSW Government and is supported by Arts NSW. The Carriageworks program can be
viewed at http://www.carriageworks.com.au