Nicholas Millen

Master of Contemporary Art

Utilising contemporary construction materials, I draw together renaissance methodologies to conflate material histories of labour and artistic production. The works in RES PUBLICA blur distinctions between figure and ground, between the focused and the periphery, between utilitarianism and sheer poetics.

My concern is with merging the history of art with the back drop of the city itself - infusing the conscious experience of viewing art, architectural patinas and advertising material with the hazily unconscious, liminal dream space of footpaths, traffic islands and public infrastructure. The works register a confluence between shared, historicised narratives of conscious propagation and the internalised psychic imaginaries that leave quiet, physical traces within city blocks.