Hany Armanious (born 1962) is an Egyptian born, Australian artist who lives and works in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

. Armanious produces installations and sculptural forms, as well as paintings and drawings.

Life and work

Hany Armanious was born in

Ismailia Ismailia ( ', ) is a city in north-eastern Egypt. Situated on the west bank of the Suez Canal, it is the capital of the Ismailia Governorate. The city had an estimated population of about 1,434,741 according to the statistics issued by the Cen ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

and migrated to Australia with his family at the age of 6. He completed his schooling in Australia and holds a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) degree from the City Art Institute, Sydney and a doctorate in Creative Arts from the

University of Wollongong The University of Wollongong (UOW) is an Australian public university, public research university located in the coastal city of Wollongong, New South Wales, approximately south of Sydney. , the university had an enrolment of more than 33,000 s ...

.) Since 2019 he has been Head of Sculpture at the

National Art School The National Art School (NAS) is a tertiary level art school, located in , an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The school is an independent accredited higher education provider offering specialised study in studio arts ...

in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. In the early nineties Armanious considered a ‘key figure’ in a number of artists who critics noted as being influenced by the

grunge Grunge (sometimes referred to as the Seattle sound) is an alternative rock Music genre, genre and subculture that emerged during the in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington, particularly in Seattle and Music of Olympia, Washington, O ...

movement. Although born in Egypt and conscious of its cultural ties, Armanious’s work does not specifically reference that culture. He has been described as an artist who can 're-describe objects' using ‘poor materials’. As his practice has developed Armanious has achieved this goal through making moulds of ordinary objects and replicating them as parts of completed works. As Armonious has himself said, ‘…my interest in casting partly grew from a technique in my painting that utilized contact prints. Casting is like three-dimensional printmaking.“ Casting has now become central; to Armanious’s work and a ‘key strategy’ that allows him to bring almost any object that catches his eye into the studio and via casting to the exhibition space ‘refiguring elements and processes both literally and metaphorically’. In constructing and assembling his cast sculptures Armanious infuses and even ‘exploits’ the humorous potential brought to play on his work through the human need to find meaning within complicated and even abstract forms - the

isomorphic In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping or morphism between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between the ...

condition that prompts us to find images and meaning in inkblots, clouds and other abstract combinations. The success of this idea can be seen in Australian art critic Rex Butler's descriptions of three plastic shopping bags Armanious presented as the work ''Ladybug (Pornament)'' in 1993. Butler looks at the work and questions whether they resemble a green skirt and white blazer, inverted pantyhose, or perhaps ‘a man crucified head down and arms wide like St. Peter’.

Exhibitions

Armanious has shown with a number of dealer galleries and currently exhibits with Michael Lett in Auckland
Fine Arts, Sydney
an
Southard Reid
in London. He has also shown with Foxy Production in New York
Sarah Cottier Gallery
and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Naples and th
Galerie Allen
in Paris. Selected exhibitions in public art institutions: * ''The Readymade Boomerang; Certain Relations in 20th-century Art'' (group) 8th

Biennale of Sydney The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and ...

. 1990 Artistic Director René Block focussed on

Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

and the power of the

readymade A found object (a calque from the French ''objet trouvé''), or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already have ...

on 20th century art. * ''Perspecta'' (group)

Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most import ...

, Sydney. 1991 Curated by Victoria Lynn. * ''The Boundary Rider'' 9th Biennale of Sydney (group). 1992 Artistic Director: Anthony Bond. * ''Wit’s end''

Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers ...

. 1993 (group) Curated by Kay Campbell. * ''Aperto ’93'' at the ''45th

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

'' 1993 (group). Directed by

Achille Bonito Oliva Achille Bonito Oliva (born 1939) is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contemp ...

. * ''Plastic Fantastic'' (group) Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. 1993 * ''Aussemblage'' (group) Auckland City Gallery, New Zealand. 1994 * '' Johannesburg Biennale'' (group) South Africa. 1995 * ''Möet and Chandon Touring Art'' (group) Prize

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

Canberra Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...

. 1998 Touring all state galleries. Armanious was the 1998 Fellow. Armanious was also included in the 2000 edition of the Möet et Chandon Fellows Exhibition at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. * ''Hammer Projects: Hany Armanious''

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

Los Angeles. 2001 * ''Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968 – 2002'' (group)

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and list of most visited art museums in the world, most visited art mu ...

, 2002 Federation Square, Melbourne. * ''Bloom mutation, toxicity and the'' sublime. (group) Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. 2003 * ''National Sculpture Prize'' 2005 (group) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. 2005 * ''Hany Armanious: Artists Project'' Auckland Art Gallery. 2005 * ''Before the Body-Matter'' (group)

Monash University Museum of Art The Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), formerly the Monash University Gallery, is a contemporary art museum on Monash University's Caulfield campus on Dandenong Road, Melbourne, Australia. History The Museum grew out of a number of ear ...

, Melbourne. 2006 * ''Uncanny Nature'' Australia Centre of Contemporary Art, Melbourne. 2006 Curated by Rebecca Coates. * Busan Biennale (group) Korea. 2006 * ''Hany Armanious: Morphic Resonance'' City Gallery, Wellington and

Institute of Modern Art The Institute of Modern Art (IMA) is a public art gallery located in the Judith Wright Arts Centre in the Brisbane inner-city suburb of Fortitude Valley, which features contemporary artworks and showcases emerging artists in a series of group and ...

, Brisbane 2007. The exhibition title comes from biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s theory around the ‘unseen interconnectedness of things’. * ''Hany Armanious'' Contemporary Art Museum ST Louis, United States of America. 2008 * ''Ceramica'' (group) Institute of Contemporary Art, Sydney. 2008 * ''Before and After Science'' Adelaide Biennale. 2010 (group) Curated by Charlotte Day and Sarah Tutton, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. * ''The Golden Thread (2011)'' at The fifty- fourth

. 2011 Armanious was the Australian representative at the 54th Biennale his work examining, ‘the relationship between the

and figurative sculptural traditions’. * ''Mutatis Mutandis'' (group)

Secession Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a Polity, political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal i ...

, Vienna. 2012 * ''Hany Armanious’s Fountain'' Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney. 2013 Armanious’s installation was the Inaugural Museum of Contemporary Art Sculpture the first in a series of commissions on the MCA’s new Loti Smorgon Sculpture Terrace. The sculpture was based on an anatomical model of the inner ear. * ''Future Eaters'' (group) MUMA (Monash University Museum of Art), Melbourne. 2017 * ''Hany Amanious Stone Soup''

Henry Moore Foundation The Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established for education and promotion of the fine arts — in particular, to advance understanding of the works of Henry Moore, and to promote the public appreciation of sculpt ...

. 2024

Note

For a full list of Hany Armanious exhibitions g
here

Collections

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Chartwell Collection

Heide

National Gallery of Australia

MCA
*

Queensland Art Gallery The Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) is an art museum located in South Bank, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The gallery is part of QAGOMA. It complements the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) building, situated only away. The Queensland Art Galle ...

National Gallery of Victoria

Monash University Gallery
*

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is an art museum in La Jolla, a community of San Diego, California. It is focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present. Binatio ...

Auckland City Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki

Awards

1998 Moët et Chandon fellowship 2004 Artist in residence, Elam School of Fine Arts International Arts Residency Programme, Auckland.

Life and work

Exhibitions

Note

Collections

Awards

References

Further reading