Nicholas Mahady

mail@nicholasmahady.com


c.v




Pipes, Hyacinth. 



Installation View of Pipes at Hyacinth, 2023 
Works left to right: 
Clasp, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 67 cm x 50.5 cm. 2023
Carrier 5, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 32 cm x 34 cm. 2023



Installation view, Pipes, Hyacinth, Melbourne, 2023.
Carrier 4, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 32 cm x 34 cm, 2023.
Clasp, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 67 cm x 50.5 cm. 2023
Carrier 5, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 32 cm x 34 cm. 2023



Carrier 4, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 32 cm x 34 cm, 2023.



Installation view, Pipes, Hyacinth, Melbourne, 2023.
I think of a sentence and it disappears into the landscape, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 35.2 cm x 420 cm. 2023
Carrier 3 (A web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others), Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 28.9 cm x 340 cm. 2023
Carrier 4, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 32 cm x 34 cm, 2023.



Carrier 3 (A web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others), Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 28.9 cm x 340 cm. 2023




Installation View of Pipes at Hyacinth, 2023 
I think of a sentence and it disappears into the landscape, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 35.2 cm x 420 cm. 2023



Suspension, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 41 cm x 33.2 cm. 2023



Installation view, Pipes,  Hyacinth, Melbourne, 2023. 
Carrier 1, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 34 cm x 28.9 cm. 2023 
Carrier 2, Silver gelatin print, Australian blackwood and glass. 34 cm x 28.9 cm. 2023








The man asks a security guard if the NGV owns a Morandi. No, sir. He's stricken by surprise. Surely? No sir, only a drawing that is rarely on these
walls. Light sensitivity. You see I'm a photographer. Oh yes. What do you shoot on? Uh, sorry sir, that family, hands, touching, the. Nice talking to
you. Shame about the Morandi.

Lots of artists were security guards, you know? Ryman, Andre, Morris. Tell me more. Well, I'm not sure who else. But Ryman it was his education,
you see. I was joking. Oh. Smoking is going to kill you. I saw a program on anatomy. It clogs your arteries. He stubs out his cigarette. It rolls in the
wind.

Every morning the young man eats his breakfast at the kitchen table. There is a vase in its centre. The flower arrangement changes every three days:
the vase is never empty. He caresses it with two fingers. Then clutches it, as if it is a human neck. He washes a Tupperware container and fills it with
his lunch. He leaves and starts his day.

The photographer plays department store Muzak. Click. Flash. Click. Click. Muffled, something something your way back to my heart. He is
talkative today. Muttering about libidinal allegory. Michael Asher uh exposing the gallery gas heating. All the pipes going to the centre. He asks the
model to get hard. Do you have any porn? A magazine? Anything? No. Look at me. The model visits his bank. Earlier today somebody deposited a
thousand dollars into your account, sir. Thank you.

The darkroom assistant under the red light. Fringe, hair tied back. Dark skirt, white shirt. My son is having a Cowboys and Indians phase. The man
nods in recognition. He is more attentive to the photographs. We dug up a dead tree yesterday. A huge mound of soil is in the yard. I struck a pipe
because I thought it was a tree root. Too bad.

- DM









MADA NOW, Monash University.


untitled (Spleen), Silver gelatine print, 14 cm x 21 cm, 2022




Installation view, MADA NOW, Monash University, Melbourne, 2022.
Marcelle, Silver gelatine print, 14 cm x 21 cm, 2022
untitled (Spleen), Silver gelatine print, 14 cm x 21 cm, 2022




untitled (Spleen), Silver gelatine print, 50 cm x 34 cm, 2022





Marcelle, Silver gelatine print, 14 cm x 21 cm, 2022



untitled, inkjet print, 17.8 cm x 12.7 cm, 2022 




untitled, inkjet print in aluminium frame, 160 cm x 108 cm, 2022 



Installation view of untitled (Fog), Inkjet print mounted to di-bond, 108 x 84, 2022



Installation view of untitled, inkjet print in aluminium frame, 108 cm x 68 cm, 2022

 




Spleen - excerpt from exegesis: 



Flow of energies, radiation, air flow, blood pumping.

The primary role of the spleen in the human body is to filter red blood cells. The secondary role is to make white blood cells and antibodies to help fight infection in the body. In traditional Chinese medicine, the spleen is seen as a key organ, it is the symbol Yin while the stomach is the Yang. In ancient Greek medicine the spleen was linked to black bile, which was regarded as a cause of melancholia.

In Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil), poet Charles Baudelaire wrote a series of ‘spleen’ poems which in France at the time popularised the association of the spleen with melancholy. In Spleen, Baudelaire paints an image (through language) of a dreary atmosphere, one with cold rain and foggy suburbs. There is an overall melancholic depiction of the atmosphere that the narrator is situated within. The narrator ruminates on lost past lovers while “a great bell mourns” and a wet log is wrapped in smoke. Baudelaire uses these atmospheric elements and motifs to communicate emotion, and continues the connection between the spleen and a person’s state of pensive sadness or melancholy.

After reading Baudelaire’s Spleen I went to the Queen Victoria market, I walked around the butchers stalls looking for some organs, hoping to find a place where I could get some spleens. Most of the stalls had the standard meats or what I assumed where standard (as I don’t eat it myself). I asked a few butchers if they had any spleens that I could have and they all looked puzzled when I asked. On the way out I saw a display of cow hearts, I then proceeded to ask the butcher if she could find me a cow’s spleen that was 11 cm — according to the internet this is how large my own spleen would be. The spleen was then placed in a plastic bag and wrapped in butchers paper. I caught a train to Caulfield where the carriage began to stink of organs. At the university I placed the spleen on a sheet of steel and photographed it with my father’s old Pentax, as the light of my father’s overhead projector lit the organ.










New Photograpahers, Daine Singer. 




Installation view, New Photographers, Daine Singer, Melbourne, 2024
untitled (Heater), Inkjet print, 108 x 84, 2022
untitled, inkjet print, 160 cm x 108 cm, 2022







Installation view of untitled (Heater) at Monash University, Inkjet print mounted to di-bond, 108 x 84, 2022







One train may hide another, Cathedral Cabinet. 



Nicholas Mahady & Marcel Croxson
One train may hide another, Cathedral Cabinet, Melbourne, 2021.
Mixed media, dimentions variable. 






High quality plastics, Adult Contempoary.  


Untitled, Inkjet print mounted to di-bond, 60 cm x 90 cm. 2023