Work in progress: Nick Stranks

My recent research has centred on my own tools, and a collection of sand casting tools that I have found. I have been using the tools to explore and create a narrative, one that explores my own identity. These tools have been used to create a body of work that upon reflection forms a self-portrait. I have had a long association with tools, earning a living, developing a practice and creating other artists work with them. They will continue to form my identity, as a maker.

In this latest series of work, Nick Stranks sets about to catalogue his life as a journeyman-artist-fixer. Stranks is well known for his casting and making skills, and has executed major projects for several prominent artists. In his own practice, Stranks has been interested in tools and in the way things get “done.” Being a maker, doer and fixer, he essays in this exhibition something approaching an autobiography. His images speak of an engagement with tools, his own as well as those of others, and what this intimate interaction with inanimate objects might do to illuminate aspects of personality. Stranks works with a mix of materials to deliver not only evidence of the labour and skill maker, but also its erasure.

(Edited text from an essay written by Dr Chaitanya Sambrani, Senior Lecturer in the Centre of Art History and Art Theory, ANU School of Art for CHAT: CMU FACULTY OF FINE ARTS AND ANU SCHOOL OF ART EXHIBITION, 2014)

Nick Stranks is currently a lecturer at the ANU School of Art Sculpture workshop and a PhD candidate in the ANU School of Art Printmedia and Drawing workshop.