Gian Manik’s approach to painting is informed by an irreverence for genre and resistance to stylistic categorisation. Driven by a compulsion to paint, Manik’s artworks move dexterously between the polarities of figuration and abstraction, often sprawling into the modalities of fashion and music. Within Manik’s layered surfaces, references from the fabric of his daily life and familial history converge with gestural passages to form a chaotic palimpsest of representation and memory. Nostalgic, melancholic and facetious, Manik’s paintings vibrate with emotional and compositional intensity.
Gian Manik (born 1985, Boorloo Perth) currently lives and works in Naarm Melbourne. He holds a Masters in Fine Art from Monash University, Melbourne, and a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Curtin University, Perth. Manik was recently an Artist In Residence at DESA, Ubud, Indonesia (2024); Bundanon, New South Wales (2022) and an informal residency with The Australian Ballet (2023). He has also just completed a commission for PICA, Perth’s 2024 Artist Edition.
Recent exhibition highlights include MINE, Sumer, Auckland (solo); You own the school, embrace your responsibility for its legacy, Gertrude Glasshouse, Melbourne, 2024 (solo); Don Quixote, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2023 (solo); The Ramsay Art Prize 2023, Art Gallery of South Australia, Melbourne, 2023; Gertrude Studios 2023, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2023; Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2022; Marouflage, Bus Projects, Melbourne 2021 (solo); Rough, Raw and Magic in Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2017; Portrait Project, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 2017; What is your name, It’s a Symbol, Don’t Talk, FORM, Perth, 2017; and Painting, More Painting, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2016.
His work is included in AGWA, City of Darrebin, ArtBank, and various private collections across Australia and internationally.