Panto Collapsar by Mikala Dwyer

Mikala Dwyer is one of Australia’s most established and influential contemporary artists, based in Sydney. This exhibition was first shown at Project Arts Centre in Dublin in 2012 and was her first time creating an installation in Ireland. Mikala works with a variety of materials and objects, bringing them together into what has been described as a ‘community of objects’, meaning that the objects relate to one another and work together to create a whole.

This exhibition is both a continuation of Mikala’s ongoing interests (in the occult, the natural world, science, maths, materials, objects, and space) and a response to Ireland (its heritage, culture and current economic situation). The title of the exhibition, Panto Collapsar, brings together two ideas, Panto suggesting a sense of theatre, comedy and audience participation (a pantomime) and Collapsar , a term used to describe the movement of a collapsed star into a black hole, an impending collapse. For this exhibition Mikala was particularly interested in exploring gold as a material.