The Thousands

Comparisons between Melbourne artist Michael Doolan and a certain Mr Koons are obvious, but it’s Doolan’s use of materials that sets his work apart.

With a background in ceramics, he recreates cheap, mass-produced, pint-sized, moveable children’s toys with traditional ceramic modelling techniques; instilling in them rarity, fragility and fixity. **Glazing them up to a dozen times, the cold, perfected platinum lustre finish refects everything back at the viewer.

Staring blankly, his up-scaled characters from toyland are hard, faceless, motionless and impenetrable, sitting somewhere between childhood and adulthood, living and dead, innocent and sinister. They’re standing stoic in a gallery on Danks Street now, awaiting you.