Coastal Signs is pleased to present Breath Spectrum, a solo exhibition of new work by Nick Austin.

Breath Spectrum brings together a collection of new assemblage sculptures. Each is a material contemplation on ageing and legacy, life and afterlife. Where does stuff go when we are finished with it? Where do we go when we are finished?

Variously the works present: intersections of industrial, artistic, and cultural-heritage labour; concrete meditations on occupation and retirement; transistor radio frequencies as cognitive flavourings; caution around digital oils (that is, the transfer of oils from a person’s fingers to delicate surfaces).

In a new essay for the forthcoming catalogue, Life Puzzle, Christina Barton says of Austin's practice more broadly:

His inclination towards the small and the slow, the funny and the slight, is purposeful: it is a kind of assumed off-centredness, covert but gently inquisitorial. This way of being in the world materialises in his practice not only in his subject matter, but in his approach to making and his choice of media.

Austin is inclined to work in a minor key: his works are often small in scale or he oddly supersizes things that are normally insubstantial; he draws in coloured pencil; his lettering is positively childish. Flimsy paper, fragile newsprint, polystyrene, wobbly lines, clunky paintwork: these are signs to be interpreted, that reinforce the hesitancy, the querulousness, the silly inanity that in fact masks the seriousness of Austin’s enterprise.

Nick Austin (b. 1979) lives and works in Ōtepoti Dunedin. He received his BVA from Auckland University of Technology in 2001, and his MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2004. Austin was the Frances Hodgkins Fellow in 2012. Recent exhibitions include Outdoor Sculptures, Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington (2024) and Life Puzzle; a touring exhibition at Whangārei Art Museum, Adam Art Gallery, and Tauranga Art Gallery (2022-2023). A catalogue of Life Puzzle will be published (by Robert Heald Gallery) later this year.

The development of this exhibition was supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.