June 5–October 10, 2021
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki is pleased to announce the launch of All That Was Solid Melts. The exhibition takes the viewer on a journey of material, emotional and philosophical encounters as we contemplate isolation, stoicism, fear, anxiety and dread, all the time accompanied by the consolations of art, aesthetics and beauty as imagined through the minds of artists. All That Was Solid Melts contemplates deep and long time, close and cosmic. It travels through the evidence of temporality—fossil, geological, ruins and cultural fragmentations in which all life and humanity is tested and reasserted, emerging as resilient and rejuvenated and set free from worry. It encounters the unquiet and unrest, the geopolitical and the environmental cataclysms that shape and reformulate our societies and terrain. With international contemporary art joined with historical works of significance, All That Was Solid Melts rests on moments of metaphor and symbols of regrowth and release. Including works by Pipilotti Rist, Tacita Dean, Pierre Huyghe, Douglas Gordon, Katie Paterson, Bill Viola, Fiona Banner, Callum Morton, Marco Fusinato, Julia Morison, Tim Veling and more, joined with selected works from Auckland Art Gallery’s own collection, including the stunning etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, this rich transhistorical exhibition demonstrates the power of art to both reflect and absorb of states of being.
All That Was Solid Melts is organised by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and curated by Juliana Engberg, Senior Curator Global Contemporary.
Exhibiting artists:
Laurence Aberhart; Sophie Anderson; Fiona Banner; U Biagini; Hélène Binet; Charles Blomfield; Orfeo Boselli; Emile-Antoine Bourdelle; Alfred Henry Burton; Hilary Roy Clark; Les Cleveland; Leonardo Carlo Coccorante; Kate Daw; Tacita Dean; Gustave Doré; Gaspard Dughet; John James Fields; James Ford; Marco Fusinato; Max Gimblett; Thomas Girtin; Douglas Gordon; Ernst Haas; Bill Henson; Ferdinand Ritter von Hochstetter; John Holmwood; Pierre Huyghe; Juan de Juanes; Richard Lewer; Trevor Lloyd; Andrea Locatelli; Mathew McWilliams; Hendrik Mommers; Julia Morison; Callum Morton; John Nash; Paul Nash; John Nixon; Fanny Osborne; Katie Paterson; Peter Peryer; Giovanni Battista Piranesi; James Crowe Richmond; Pipilotti Rist; Harry Rountree; Thomas Ryan; Marie Shannon; Charlie Sofo; Franz Sturtzkopf; E Mervyn Taylor; Greer Twiss; John Varley; Tim Veling; Bill Viola; Richard Wilson
For media enquiries:
Priscilla Southcombe, Communications Officer, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
priscilla.southcombe [at] aucklandartgallery.com
