Rate My Professor Nicholas Mangan

Nicholas Mangan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Art within Monash University's Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. Born in 1979 on Wathaurong Country in Geelong, he lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. He earned a PhD in Fine Arts from Monash University in 2015 and a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2001. He undertook postgraduate studies at Universität der Künste in Berlin, Germany, in 2007, funded by the Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship. Mangan's artistic practice is driven by a desire to unpack stories embedded in specific sites, objects, and events, exploring the unstable relationship between culture and nature and evidencing flows of matter, energy, and ideologies produced through their tension.

Mangan's research interests include materiality, art and ecology, climate emergency, systems and networks, economies of climate change, extractivist capitalism, ecology, climate extremes, material culture, ecoterrorism, mining, extraction, economic history, materiality, agency, energy materials, and energy economics. Notable projects encompass Termite Economies, which draws on neural and biological systems to question labour, consumption, capitalism, and its rifts; Progress in Action; Limits to Growth; and Ancient Lights. He has presented solo exhibitions at LABOR, Mexico City (2020); Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2020); Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2019); and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015). Group exhibitions include the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018), 11th Taipei Biennial (2019), and 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016). His works reside in collections such as Tate Modern, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Awards include the Australia Council Fellowship for Visual Arts (2020), Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture (co-winner, 2020), Monash University Vice-Chancellor's Award for Research Excellence by an Early Career Researcher (2018), and Australia Council Creative Australia Fellowship (2014). Key publications feature Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone (2024) and Limits to Growth (2016). Mangan serves as a graduate research supervisor at Monash.