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Ronnie van Hout is a bold and playful multimedia artist whose aesthetic reflects an ongoing engagement with the uncanny. Having honed a distinctive style referred to as ‘existential absurdism’, van Hout’s sculptural installations, videos and text works evoke constructed worlds that are simultaneously humorous, unsettling and nostalgic. Throughout his career, the artist has treated his own body as subject and object, using moulds and resin to create various doppelgangers that play with ideas of the self, while avoiding self-portraiture or narcissism. Many of his works explore a fascination with the figure of the ‘outsider’ ­– aliens, robots, gurus and cult leaders – interrogating the psychology of uneven power relationships while setting up situations in which the audience’s gaze is returned.

van Hout has exhibited regularly since the 1980s and has been the subject of three major survey exhibitions, No one is watching you, Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne (2018); I’ve abandoned me, presented and toured, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2003-2005); and Who goes there, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu (2009). He has been included in a number of major institutional group exhibitions, including The National 4: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2017); and Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2013). van Hout’s work is held in all international and national private and public collections, including Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Aus-tralia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Ton-garewa, Wellington; and Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland.

Ronnie van Hout

No One is Watching You