New Dog Old Tricks

Dogs have been our companions for centuries. For just as long, artists have been drawn to these emotional, complex beings, using them to explore questions of bravery, loyalty, and compassion.

In New Dog Old Tricks we present new work by 10 artists, each invited to re-examine these thematic issues, and, most importantly, to imagine the dog as a key to other worlds. Asserting that unconditional love is a fantasy, we observe the bonds between dogs and people transcend conventional exchanges, and we begin to imagine the world through their eyes. Alongside the new artworks, we present significant loans from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria and private collections.

The artists in New Dog Old Tricks use the canine to interrogate modes of communication, to re-examine and re-frame mythology, alternative biologies, presenting a menagerie of creatures who resist classification. Here, dogs are our muses, collaborators, guides, protectors, comedians, companions and shrines. This exhibition celebrates the implosion of nature and culture through the intertwined lives of dogs and people.

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The commissioned artists include Billy Bain, David Griggs, Guido Maestri, Jason Phu, Julia Gutman, Madeleine Pfull, Marc Etherington, Nadia Hernández, Noel Mckenna and Todd Fuller. They will be presented alongside loaned artworks from the Art Gallery of NSW, National Gallery of Victoria and private collections by artists including Jeff Koons, Adam Cullen, Aleks Danko, Richard Walker, Del Kathryn Barton, Louise Hearman and William Wegman.

New Dog Old Tricks is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW

Image: Aleks Danko, Log Dog, 1970. John Kaldor Family Collection.