Ian Friend

Holdings 2023 | Group Exhibition

 

Holdings 2023 | Group Exhibition

28 November - 20 December, 2023

Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present Holdings 2023, a group exhibition of selected works celebrating the exhibiting artists of 2023. We welcome you to our gallery stockroom for viewing.

Exhibiting Artists:

Andrew Browne
Angela Brennan
Dadang Christanto
David Fenoglio
Ian Friend
Jacinta Giles
Jonathan Kopinski
Joseph Daws
Kellie O’Dempsey
Miles Hall
Natalie Lavelle
Simon Degroot

 

Lux Æterna | Ian Friend & Robyn Daw

 

Lux Æterna | Ian Friend & Robyn Daw

17 January - 4 February, 2023

Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present Lux Æterna by Ian Friend & Robyn Daw showing between 17 January - 4 February, 2023. 

There will be a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realize that it is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realize, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are. 

Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk (New York: Grove Press, 2014)

 

The Days Run Away | Ian Friend

 

The Days Run Away | Ian Friend

19 January - 6 February, 2022

Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present The Days Run Away by Ian Friend on show at the gallery between 19 January - 6 February 2022. The survey exhibition features works from his earlier practice, as well as very recent creations including a series of sculptures, the first made by Ian in decades. Rather than provide a clear narrative for its audience, The Days Run Away invites the viewer to take pleasure in the abstract and poetic nature of its works. 

Catalogue essay writer Zali Matthews states: 

The songs, poems and stories informing Friend’s works emerge as abstract, rounded forms, sometimes large and elongated, fine and peppery, or translucent and amorphous. They are repeated endlessly, compulsively: in white clumps, like snow; or in groups of fine dots, like small perforations in paper, clustered galaxies or sheets of falling rain. Looking at Friend’s works, the viewer is given the impression of looking both in and out, at atoms and at galaxies. Friend blurs the boundaries between micro- and macrocosms, removing human scale. 


Photograph of Ian Friend taken by Embie Tan Aren.

From the Studio

In anticipation of Ian Friend’s first solo exhibition The Days Run Away, the JMG team recently visited Ian’s studio to learn more about his artistic practice.

In this interview, Ian joins Gallery Assistant Zali Matthews in conversation about his practice and the parcels of history, music and poetry that have inspired it…