Dominic Kavanagh, Eden’s Hollow, 2017 site-specific installation, dimensions variable

In Eden’s Hollow Dominic Kavanagh presents a site through which our contemporary relationship to urban decay can be explored. Using discarded industrial materials, alongside earth, weeds, water and light, Kavanagh constructs monuments to decay and regeneration within the gallery walls.

A focus on the architectural power of ruins informs Kavanagh’s engagement with the language of decomposition. With light mysteriously emanating from deep within Kavanagh’s installation of brick, steel, earth and rubble, and with water flowing from various crevices, Eden’s Hollow rejects passivity, and instead presents a growing, living, fluid testament to the ruins that emerge from sites of industrial abandonment.  

Solo exhibitions include The Beehive, Blindside Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; Relics of Utopia, Seventh Gallery, Fitzroy, 2013; Picnic at Phoenix Falls, Incinerator Art Gallery, Moonee Ponds, 2013, Requiem for Urban Ruin: The Lock-Up, The Lock-Up Cultural Centre, Newcastle, 2013; and Substituting Nature, C3 Contemporary Art Space, Abbotsford, 2012.

In 2016 Kavanagh was curated into the group exhibition This Place. That Place. No Place by Irina Asriian/In Exile Projects, an exhibition at Neon Parlour, as well as Under Construction, at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, curated by Claire Watson, and Closing Exhibition, curated by Marie Schoenmaker, at Conduit Arts, Fitzroy. Other group exhibitions include Seven Trumpets, Strange Neighbour, Fitzroy, 2014; The Gleaner’s Archive, D11, Docklands, 2014; and Noise Flash, curated by Todd Anderson-Kunert for the 2013 Liquid Architecture Festival, Melbourne.

Kavanagh has been shortlisted for numerous awards, and is represented in private collections.