2019 - Dane Mitchell
Dane Mitchell (Artist) Post hoc, 2018-19. Courtesy of the artist.
Core Team Members
Commissioner: Dame Jenny Gibbs
Lead Curator: Dr Zara Stanhope
Project Curator: Chris Sharp
Project Director: Jude Chambers
Exhibition Attendants
Hope Wilson, Benny Chan, James Hope, Moya Lawson, Brook Konia & Erin McFarlane
Project Publication Dane Mitchell: Post Hoc
Editors: Dr Zara Stanhope & Chris Sharp
Contributing writers: Dr Stephen Turner, Heman Chong
Editorial: Clare McIntosh
Publication management: Studio Akin & Mousse Publishing
Designer: Tana Mitchell & Emma Kaniuk - Studio Akin
Publisher: Mousse Publishing
At the heart of Dane Mitchell’s Post hoc, are 260 meticulously researched lists of countless phenomena that existed, but are now no more.
From the New Zealand Pavilion, Post hoc broadcasted a mournful archive numbering in the millions across the city, via seven, six-metre tall cell-phone tree towers installed in public sites around Venice. The source of the automated voice was an echo-free chamber installed in the Palazzina Canonica, the former headquarters of exhibition partner Istituto di Scienze Marine (CNR-ISMAR).
These extinct, disappeared, obsolete, withdrawn and absent things were transmitted continuously throughout the duration of the Biennale. To be heard in their entirety required hearing 15,000 words a day, over 176 days, 8 hours a day.
Simultaneously, the lists could also be listened to at trees in four public sites: Università Iuav di Venezia, The Architecture School; Ospedale Civile di Venezia, The Hospital; Sant’Elena, Parco Rimembranze; and the North Arsenale, Internal Garden. At any of the tree towers, a list could be selected and streamed on a handheld device when within the field of each tree’s wifi network.
Coinciding with the audible component, the immaterial lists found tangible form in the Palazzina’s emptied library, where lines of text printed on rolls of paper in sync with the transmissions, slowly filling the space over the six-month duration of the Biennale.
A Latin phrase, ‘Post hoc’ translates as ‘after this’. It describes the assumption that an occurrence has a logical relationship with the event it follows. In Mitchell’s presentation, Post hoc evoked the question of the connections between events and vanished ‘past things’, without necessarily calling up judgement.
Post hoc was generously supported by our partners and sponsors: Te Papa Tongarewa, Leigh Melville and the New Zealand at Venice Patrons, Anthony Simpson, New Zealand Ambassador to Italy and the New Zealand Embassy in Rome, exhibition partner Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISMAR), Akin, Man o’ war, and Hopkinson Mossman.
Elements of Post hoc will be presented at Christchurch Art Gallery in 2020.
More on the artist
Dane Mitchell’s practice is concerned with the physical properties of the intangible and visible manifestations of other dimensions. His work teases out the potential for objects and ideas to appear and disappear, and our ability to perceive or imagine transfiguration. His practice evokes a connection between the sensual and the conscious. It speculates on what is material and explores systems of knowledge or belief and people’s experiences of them.
Dane has an extensive national and international exhibition history, including participation in a number of biennales across Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom and Asia, including Thailand’s first Biennale, Krabi. He has held solo exhibitions at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and Institut d’Art Contemporain, Viilleurbane/Lyon; as well as participated in a citywide project in Belgium, PLAY Kortrijk. In 2019 Dane held solo exhibitions at Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland; Hopkinson Mossman, Wellington; and Château de Rentilly, Bussy-Saint-Martin, France.
