Nabilah Nordin (b. 1991) is a Singaporean-Australian artist based in New York. She is recognised for towering abstract sculptures that sit between the poise of a monument and the absurdity of a slapstick invention. Her work plays with the vocabulary of grandeur and exaggeration, drawing as much on Baroque ornament as on melted birthday candles, birds of paradise, archaeological sites and hot-rod cars. While her references are disparate, they are chosen for their formal qualities: the extremity of their colours, the oddities of their shapes or the tactility of their surfaces. Nordin combines these elements into hybrid configurations that compress historical time and collapse high and low culture, concealing their origins and embracing the unknowable.
She begins each sculpture by bending and welding steel rods, building the armature gesture by gesture until calligraphic lines interlace with voluminous masses in dense arrangements. Surfaces are subjected to an expansive range of treatments, from 17th-century faux-marble plaster and ancient lime-clay techniques to automotive spray, oxidising rust paint and bronze casting. Applied to her contorted forms, these methods produce contradictory visual logics, such as knotted marble or convulsing cement. Persistently undermining the expectations of her chosen mediums, Nordin demands a visceral engagement rooted in sensation and material vitality.
Nordin has exhibited at museums, biennales and galleries across Australia, Asia and the USA. Recent solo exhibitions and presentations include island, New York; Parrasch Heijnen, Los Angeles; Australian Embassy, Washington DC; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Singapore Biennale; Changwon Sculpture Biennale, South Korea; Neon Parc, Melbourne; and Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Ryan Lee, New York; Parrasch Heijnen, Los Angeles; La Loma, Los Angeles; The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; Bundanon Art Museum, Illaroo; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; RISING, Melbourne; Murray Art Museum Albury, Albury. Nordin’s work is held in public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales; Monash University Museum of Art; Artbank; National Gallery of Victoria; and the MIIA Collection.
island, New York
Neon Parc, Art Basel Hong Kong
Neon Parc, Melbourne
Parrasch Heijnen, Los Angeles
Embassy of Australia, Washington DC
The National 4: Australian Art Now, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Neon Parc, Art Cologne
Neon Parc, Melbourne
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
Missing Persons, Melbourne
COMA Gallery, Sydney
Changwon Sculpture Biennale, Changwon
Singapore Biennale, Singapore
Ryan Lee, New York
La Loma x Vielmetter, Los Angeles
The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne
Make Room x Meeting Point, Los Angeles
Carl Larsson x Invisible Dynamics, Los Angeles
Megan Mulrooney, Aspen
RISING, Melbourne and Brisbane Powerhouse
La Loma, Los Angeles
National Art School, Sydney
Futures Gallery, Melbourne
Parrasch Heijnen, Miami Beach
Parrasch Heijnen, Los Angeles
COMA Gallery, Sydney
Bundanon Art Museum, Illaroo
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney
Canberra Art Biennial, Canberra
McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery, Melbourne
Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, Melbourne
RISING, Melbourne
Murray Art Museum Albury, Albury
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne
Yavuz Gallery, Sydney
LON Gallery, Melbourne
Neon Parc, Melbourne
The Commercial, Sydney
with Nick Modrzewski, Firstdraft, Sydney
Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne
Artbank, Sydney
Blindside, Melbourne
Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore
Rizzoli
Thames & Hudson
Catalogue essay, A thousand different angles, McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery
To Be Magazine, Issue 1
Art Collector, Issue 95
Art & Australia