Hany Armanious: Stone Soup

Most of the objects we lived with passed unnoticed, handled without thought. A shoelace, a candle, a child’s drawing, a paint tray, even a lump of Blu-Tack.

InStone Soup, Hany Armanious, one of Australia’s leading artists, brought these objects back into view. Through the casting process, he remade them as near-perfect doubles so precise they unsettled what we thought we knew.

His sculptures remind us of the joy of seeing something as if for the very first time, while unravelling our uncertainty about how we came to know the world through its things.

Curator Laurence Sillars said: “Armanious’s practice is not merely an exploration of the object, but an invitation to dwell in the uncertainty of perception itself – a quiet but radical challenge to the assumption that the world is a stable place. Throughout, there is joy, a celebration of being, touching, of looking so intently that the familiar becomes strange. In an age of synthetic realities, this is a profoundly generative act. Like stepping into a place where the language is unfamiliar and every word must be relearned, his sculptures offer the thrill and vertigo of finding one’s bearings in a newly translated world – a place where, in order to truly see, we must first allow ourselves to be lost.”

Stone Soup was the artist’s largest exhibition to date, featuring more than 80 works spanning 15 years of practice, including a new commission and many works never before seen in Australia.

The exhibition was curated by Laurence Sillars, Head of the Henry Moore Institute, with Samantha Comte, Head Curator, and Charlotte Day, Director of Art Museums, at the University of Melbourne, and built on a recent presentation at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, UK.

Gallery

Publication

Hany Armanious

Richly illustrated with more than 100 works and featuring a major new essay by co-curator Laurence Sillars, this publication expands on Hany Armanious’ inventive practice and serves as the definitive companion to Stone Soup.

Text by Laurence Sillars
Edited by Samantha Comte
Designed by Roland Brauchli
Lithography by Flavio Milani
Copy Editing by Linda Michael

Available for purchase at Buxton Contemporary, with postal delivery available. For purchase enquiries contact Buxton Contemporary.

$40, student discount 50%

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Henry Moore Institute