Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror

Then and Now

24 October–12 December 200924 Oct–12 Dec 2009

In the 1960s, mirrors began to be used by artists across a spectrum of international movements including pop, kinetic, minimal, and conceptual art. Mirror surfaces reflected the environment and the viewer, ‘like a visual pun on representation’, as Ian Burn observed. Not just a looking glass, mirrors indexed the instability of perception, while inviting a viewer to participate in the purported endgame of late modernism. Mirror Mirror presents classic mirror pieces from the 1960s and early 1970s by major artists including Robert Smithson, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Art & Language, Ian Burn, Joan Jonas, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, Meret Oppenheim, Richard Hamilton, and Shusaku Arakawa. Alongside them are works by contemporary Australian artists—Robyn Backen, Christian Capurro, Peter Cripps, Mikala Dwyer, Alex Gawronski, Callum Morton, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Jacky Redgate, and Robert Pulie—that offer all kinds of interconnections and reverberations with the earlier work. Mirror Mirror: Then and Now has been curated by Ann Stephen, and is a joint project with the University Art Gallery, University of Sydney, in association with Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide. The publication has been supported by a grant from the Gordon Darling Foundation.

Artists

Robert Smithson, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Art & Language, Ian Burn, Joan Jonas, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, Meret Oppenheim, Richard Hamilton, Shusaku Arakawa, Robyn Backen, Christian Capurro, Peter Cripps, Mikala Dwyer, Alex Gawronski, Callum Morton, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Jacky Redgate, and Robert Pulie

Curated By
  • Ann Stephen

The Institute of Modern Art acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the IMA now stands, the Jagera, Yuggera, Yugarapul, and Turrbal people. We offer our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first artists of this country. In the spirit of allyship, the IMA will continue to work with First Nations people to celebrate, support, and present their immense past, present, and future contribution to artistic practice and cultural expression.

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