Christopher Zanko, Sydney Contemporary 2023, Installation View

SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2023

At Sydney Contemporary 2023, Chris Zanko presents new pieces on aluminium and his largest hand carved wood-relief works to date in both monochrome and colour. With both new material and scale, Wandering Where elevates the artist’s continuing appraisal and appreciation for Australia’s mid-century housing. An installation of cut-out forms attached to lattice furthers the dialogue between the plan-based format of the house and the vernacular and at times eccentric front yards attached to them.

Funding from the Create NSW Visual Arts Commissioning Program has allowed the Wollongong based artist to research innovative materials and work with new processes. He states: “My subject matter, the context of these mid-century dwellings, is so tied in with industry and manufacturing from the steelworks, the smelting, the foundries. I really wanted to do something with steel or aluminium. It was hard to land on something that was going to have the same amount of detail I create in a relief work.”

Zanko initially talked with foundries before collaborating with a metal finishes company to get the striking result showing at Sydney Contemporary. He began by carving a representation of the blast furnace at Port Kembla Steelworks and then had the work 3D scanned. It was then printed with aluminium in different finishes. The outcome is a solidly sculptural yet pictorial form in a pressed metal edition of three. The manufacturing process is an invigorating synthesis of material and context and an exciting progression. As he reflects, “The blast furnace is a place where workers are manufacturing multiples but on a mass scale. I wanted to play a bit further with that idea of the multiple. And of course, the steelworks is the centre of production, tied to the ongoing work that I have made looking at housing in Wollongong.”

Expanding on this are the large monochrome wall works commenced in 2022. These sustain the detail of the artist’s full-colour pieces but pare it back to one confidently selected hue. They offer an assured textural surface where we can explore variations of pattern and legibility in the image. The monochrome Flashe vinyl orange floods across the wood carving in a colour that suggests contemporary life, signage, high viz and car finishes. Zanko describes the colour as like the glow of the steelworks at night or the vivid silhouette of a red brick house burnt to the retina on a bright summer day.

Cohabiting with the aluminium and monochrome works are wood cut-outs installed on lattice that explore an incidental array of topiary, plant pots and garden objects. Zanko has an ongoing interest in the way the front yard offers a setting for individual design expression. The installation suggests open-ended rearrangements, like ad hoc extensions made to homes and the interaction between formal and informal design expression.

Prior to the lattice installation, the artist had worked with found and stacked breezeblocks, wallpaper and garden fountains in gallery spaces. The larger wall pieces and ongoing installation are all part of Zanko’s pursuit to make even more immersive work. A bigger scale allows him to embed a lot more information in the scene, whether it be the tiles, folds in curtains, driveways or the addition of decorative borders that invite the viewer to step across into this parallel space. The cut-outs inversely bring elements out into the gallery space in the looser way we might need to employ navigating sculptures or plant pots along a garden path.

The aluminium edition, monochromes and cut pieces are significant expansions in Chris Zanko’s loving appreciation of mid-century Australian homes. It has been a wildly prodigious development since the artist’s first solo exhibition at the Egg & Dart, Wollongong in 2017. A recent solo show in the heart of Tokyo in 2022 (Laidbug, Shibuya-ka) brought the artist closer to his enduring interest in Japanese woodblock print methods. Recent media has given further vivid context to his practice, including a great documentary piece for the ABC Art Works program. There have also been articles in Art Collector Magazine. Significantly, in 2022 he was a finalist in the Sulman Prize (AGNSW) and in the Hazelhurst Works on Paper Prize. In 2021 there was a major commission for the Rose Seidler House 70 th Anniversary. That work resides in the Museums of History NSW Collection, with Chris Zanko’s work also found in the collections of the Wollongong Art Gallery and University of Wollongong.

Words - Melody Willis

This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

7/09/2023 - 10/09/2023

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