Jordan Marani
Autobiography
11 April - 19 May 2018
Jordan Marani makes darkly humorous work involving personal narratives, cynical observations of the human condition and explorations of family, loss and the past. His work is drawn from such crude and everyday references as suburban life, popular culture, booze, football, the art world and family history. Early works used materials from scavenged, recycled and reclaimed rubbish, such as paintings on boards salvaged from skips, bottletops, and food packaging, and from basic and impoverished materials, such as cardboard and house paint. Recent works continue to utilise humble materials, such as bed sheets and handkerchiefs, alongside more formal and polished works on board and canvas. His multi-faceted practice includes figurative and narrative-driven paintings alongside ongoing series of text-paintings, installation and found-object sculptures. Marani blends lowbrow culture with high art, with an insistence on the value of the working class and crass.
From 2008-2011 Jordan was co-founder and director of Hell Gallery. His work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Victoria, NADA New York, Spinnerei Leipzig, Shepparton Art Museum, Static Gallery Liverpool, Switchback Gallery, 200 Gertrude Street, Daine Singer, Neon Parc, Utopian Slumps, Ryan Renshaw, Ray Hughes Gallery, Powell Street Gallery and at ARIs including Death Be Kind, Inflight, Seventh, and West Space.
Recent projects include publication of his first book, EGGS, which launched at the National Gallery of Victoria (2016), solo exhibitions at Daine Singer (2016) and at Ararat Regional Art Museum (2016), a public artwork for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2016), a residency at the Leipzig International Art Programme in Germany (2017) and group exhibitions in Leipzig and New York (2018). His work is held in the collections of the Yarra City Council, Moreland City Council, LIA Leipzig, and Ararat Regional Art Gallery.
