Collapsing Time by Mig Dann
curated by Josephine Mead
25th March - 19th April 2026
Gasworks Creative Precinct
curated by Josephine Mead
25th March - 19th April 2026
Gasworks Creative Precinct
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Images: Installation view: 'Collapsing Time' - an exhibition by Mig Dann, Gasworks Creative Precinct, 2026. Images courtesy of Gasworks.
COLLAPSING TIME.
Collapsing Time brings artworks from the last decade of Mig Dann’s practice together. Working as a senior artist with much lived experience in contemporary and historical art circles, feminist practice, trauma-informed making, and the historical oppression of women, Dann’s practice examines the past in order to build a safer future. She engages with the power of memory through her own lived experiences, charting her adoption; personal traumas; deep love and subsequent grief; and a rich life, lived partly in New York and France, where she mixed with iconic artists, musicians and creatives in the 1970s and 80s.
The works presented for this exhibition can be seen as markers, representing time periods in Dann’s life. The earliest work, Alternate Reality (2014) draws forth a memory that happened to Dann as a child, long before she discovered she was adopted. Dann has fond memories of being propped up on a log, watching her grandfather work in his shed. One day, the function of the log shifted from an object of comfort to one of danger. Her grandfather drew a white chalk line on the log's face to indicate the location to hypnotize a chicken, subsequently chopping off its head. This act of cruelty, intended to feed the family, stayed with Dann and led her to create this work many years later. A trapezoid plywood form—a hollow structure with a glass lid, inside which a wooden log is suspended, able to be turned by a brass handle on the side—is a device for both looking and feeling. The viewer is invited to turn the handle, experiencing an embodied encounter with Dann’s memory.
I remember... (2018) sits within a wider body of work of the same title that illustrates the memories of her past, across sculpture, text and video. For this iteration, Dann presents a vintage typewriter atop a found wooden table. The title of the work is carved into the back of the typist's chair. From the typewriter a stream of paper emerges covered in Dann’s memories:
I remember my first crush on a girl at school...
I remember my mother with a mouth full of straight pins...
I remember going to the Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Centre for the first time and imagining I saw Gertrude Stein staring down at me from an upper balcony...
I remember the first time I went to Max's Kansas City with Dory Weiner. She was a friend of Mickey Ruskin so we went to the back room, and I always did after that...
These recorded memories document Dann’s childhood, her experiences of adoption, her lived experience in New York and France and the deep love she held for her late partner Betty.
Creating work from personal trauma has led Dann to undertake a PhD in the topic, completed in 2022 at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). A key work created during this time is Dopplegangster (2020). This sculpture examines how dissociation is a consequence of trauma. Two child-like figures are forever hung on a metal frame, reminiscent of schoolyard monkey bars. The violence of the figures being hung where their hands should be—a durational physical exercise that would quickly become excruciating—speaks to the violence and long-term effects of childhood abuse. The viewer is encouraged to swing the sculptures, becoming implicated in the handling of the figures. We are reminded of the power that adults can have upon children.
Filmed in the Old Melbourne Gaol, Just Breathe (2021), references nineteenth-century women prisoners who were masked to prevent communication during their daily hour outside their cells. This experience mirrors the ways in which women have been silenced throughout history and also invokes the injunction to allay anxiety in extraordinary times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Dann created a series of reimagined silence masks to bring to life the stories of these women. A group of multi-generational performers in Dann’s costumes dance, responding to the space and a haunting sound work. As Dann explains, “through reimagining the silence masks, I am drawing attention to the patriarchal strictures that were placed on women in nineteenth-century society, and to a lesser degree, today. The masks talk to many points throughout time and history–from Neolithic stone masks found near the Dead Sea, to the iron scold’s mask used in sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain to punish ‘nagging women’, and the Venetian beak-masks worn by medieval plague doctors as protection against the Black Death— bringing viewers back to the present in loops.”
Much of Dann's recent work has examined the non-linear complexities of grief. On 30th
November 2020, Mig's long-term partner Betty Bobbitt died suddenly. For Love is in the Bag (2022), Dann has collected Betty's clothing, sealing the collection into plastic bags that have become a static sculptural installation. Viewers are encouraged to consider how material garments can hold memories and how art can be a vehicle for memorialization. By presenting the work on the floor of Gasworks’ James McCaughey Foyer Gallery, viewers are encouraged to consider what traces lovers leave on us, and what objects and materials become memory devices that accompany and ameliorate grief.
Collapsing Time (2026), created for this exhibition, is a work about reifying the healing power of memory. Throughout her practice Dann encounters her memories as an active, disruptive force. Recalling a sad and defiant childhood consoled by time spent near the water, the work references a young Dann dreaming of escape. A boat sits atop an ocean of deep blue/green tulle, a small photograph of a 3-year-old child sits inside, suggesting a sense of sailing away to this dreamed-of future. This sculpture represents a long-ago wish for the strong and brilliant future Dann has been able to build for herself.
For this exhibition, past works have been disrupted—in an attempt to collapse time between that of initial making and the present. Alternate Reality has been upended, inviting the viewer to examine the internal work of memory; I remember… is a reminder that memory is malleable and unwieldy; Love is in the bag is messy and uncontained, the beginning of the letting-go of grief; and Collapsing time has evolved from an external to an internal assessment of finding home.
Collapsing Time illustrates the power of memory as a generative and reparative force, in the face of oppression, abuse and grief.
— Josephine Mead
COLLAPSING TIME.
Collapsing Time brings artworks from the last decade of Mig Dann’s practice together. Working as a senior artist with much lived experience in contemporary and historical art circles, feminist practice, trauma-informed making, and the historical oppression of women, Dann’s practice examines the past in order to build a safer future. She engages with the power of memory through her own lived experiences, charting her adoption; personal traumas; deep love and subsequent grief; and a rich life, lived partly in New York and France, where she mixed with iconic artists, musicians and creatives in the 1970s and 80s.
The works presented for this exhibition can be seen as markers, representing time periods in Dann’s life. The earliest work, Alternate Reality (2014) draws forth a memory that happened to Dann as a child, long before she discovered she was adopted. Dann has fond memories of being propped up on a log, watching her grandfather work in his shed. One day, the function of the log shifted from an object of comfort to one of danger. Her grandfather drew a white chalk line on the log's face to indicate the location to hypnotize a chicken, subsequently chopping off its head. This act of cruelty, intended to feed the family, stayed with Dann and led her to create this work many years later. A trapezoid plywood form—a hollow structure with a glass lid, inside which a wooden log is suspended, able to be turned by a brass handle on the side—is a device for both looking and feeling. The viewer is invited to turn the handle, experiencing an embodied encounter with Dann’s memory.
I remember... (2018) sits within a wider body of work of the same title that illustrates the memories of her past, across sculpture, text and video. For this iteration, Dann presents a vintage typewriter atop a found wooden table. The title of the work is carved into the back of the typist's chair. From the typewriter a stream of paper emerges covered in Dann’s memories:
I remember my first crush on a girl at school...
I remember my mother with a mouth full of straight pins...
I remember going to the Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Centre for the first time and imagining I saw Gertrude Stein staring down at me from an upper balcony...
I remember the first time I went to Max's Kansas City with Dory Weiner. She was a friend of Mickey Ruskin so we went to the back room, and I always did after that...
These recorded memories document Dann’s childhood, her experiences of adoption, her lived experience in New York and France and the deep love she held for her late partner Betty.
Creating work from personal trauma has led Dann to undertake a PhD in the topic, completed in 2022 at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). A key work created during this time is Dopplegangster (2020). This sculpture examines how dissociation is a consequence of trauma. Two child-like figures are forever hung on a metal frame, reminiscent of schoolyard monkey bars. The violence of the figures being hung where their hands should be—a durational physical exercise that would quickly become excruciating—speaks to the violence and long-term effects of childhood abuse. The viewer is encouraged to swing the sculptures, becoming implicated in the handling of the figures. We are reminded of the power that adults can have upon children.
Filmed in the Old Melbourne Gaol, Just Breathe (2021), references nineteenth-century women prisoners who were masked to prevent communication during their daily hour outside their cells. This experience mirrors the ways in which women have been silenced throughout history and also invokes the injunction to allay anxiety in extraordinary times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Dann created a series of reimagined silence masks to bring to life the stories of these women. A group of multi-generational performers in Dann’s costumes dance, responding to the space and a haunting sound work. As Dann explains, “through reimagining the silence masks, I am drawing attention to the patriarchal strictures that were placed on women in nineteenth-century society, and to a lesser degree, today. The masks talk to many points throughout time and history–from Neolithic stone masks found near the Dead Sea, to the iron scold’s mask used in sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain to punish ‘nagging women’, and the Venetian beak-masks worn by medieval plague doctors as protection against the Black Death— bringing viewers back to the present in loops.”
Much of Dann's recent work has examined the non-linear complexities of grief. On 30th
November 2020, Mig's long-term partner Betty Bobbitt died suddenly. For Love is in the Bag (2022), Dann has collected Betty's clothing, sealing the collection into plastic bags that have become a static sculptural installation. Viewers are encouraged to consider how material garments can hold memories and how art can be a vehicle for memorialization. By presenting the work on the floor of Gasworks’ James McCaughey Foyer Gallery, viewers are encouraged to consider what traces lovers leave on us, and what objects and materials become memory devices that accompany and ameliorate grief.
Collapsing Time (2026), created for this exhibition, is a work about reifying the healing power of memory. Throughout her practice Dann encounters her memories as an active, disruptive force. Recalling a sad and defiant childhood consoled by time spent near the water, the work references a young Dann dreaming of escape. A boat sits atop an ocean of deep blue/green tulle, a small photograph of a 3-year-old child sits inside, suggesting a sense of sailing away to this dreamed-of future. This sculpture represents a long-ago wish for the strong and brilliant future Dann has been able to build for herself.
For this exhibition, past works have been disrupted—in an attempt to collapse time between that of initial making and the present. Alternate Reality has been upended, inviting the viewer to examine the internal work of memory; I remember… is a reminder that memory is malleable and unwieldy; Love is in the bag is messy and uncontained, the beginning of the letting-go of grief; and Collapsing time has evolved from an external to an internal assessment of finding home.
Collapsing Time illustrates the power of memory as a generative and reparative force, in the face of oppression, abuse and grief.
— Josephine Mead
