Mixed Emotions | Dan Moynihan | The Art Gallery of Western Australia

This large-scale work explores patterns through repetition and prompts us to consider our emotional response to colour.

Melbourne-based artist Dan Moynihan duplicated more than 2,000 customers’ paint label orders received at Moorabbin Bunnings over a year. His dedication to the process of collecting resulted in Mixed Emotions, a work impressive in its scale, but also for its detail, precision, and rhythmic repetition. Moynihan saw a lyric quality in the labels; by presenting them in chronological order he allowed his customers to participate in guiding the visual poetry of this work.

“It did grow out of a linguistic fascination with the labels,” says Moynihan. “There is a poetry to the names of the colours and there is the pattern of the text on each label – the black print on the white label, left justified, always consistent.”

Dan Moynihan Art Guide, June 2019.

Curated by

Isobel Wise
AGWA Associate Curator, Projects

About the artist

Dan Moynihan lives and works in Melbourne. Mixed Emotions was first presented at his solo exhibition at Tolarno Galleries in 2019. This work was acquired by Wesfarmers in 2019 and it is on loan from the Wesfarmers Collection.

Moynihan has displayed his work in galleries nationally and internationally including Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, and The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. His work is held in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart.

“Dan Moynihan’s artistic development has been informed by ‘too much cinema, inappropriate texting, bricks, driving a shit car, bad habits, taking things too far, renting, Magic 1278 radio ‘the greatest songs of all time’, not accepting baldness, other people, Bunnings Warehouse, not going far enough, eating alone in restaurants’ – just to name a few. His work is often structured around the funny side of a story; and his carefully arrangement of objects are like the punctuation of a good joke.”

Tolarno Galleries

The Wesfarmers Collection

The Wesfarmers Collection is one of the pre-eminent corporate holdings of Australian art.

From the first acquisition in 1977 of a pastoral scene by the Australian impressionist Elioth Gruner, its purpose has been to accentuate the value of art in the workplace and encourage an understanding of the importance to society of supporting creative thinking and artistic vision.

Since 1990, Wesfarmers and the Art Gallery of Western Australia have enjoyed a partnership that is distinctive for its collaborative endeavours and for the range and depth of benefits enjoyed by both parties. As Principal Partner of AGWA, Wesfarmers continue to show its support for visual arts in Western Australia and more broadly across the arts sector, leading the way through their diverse support of art and cultural events and programs.